The August Sky
by HermitsUnited
Summary: Episode 3 in Virtual Season 5. Waiting is the hardest part. But someone is still fighting and a great change is about to come. Stars are falling down, but are they a sign of catastrophy or salvation? How far will the Doctor go to save Donna Noble?
1. Just an Ordinary Day

_**Disclaimer:** I have no rights whatsoever to the "Doctor Who" universe; they rightfully belong to its creators. They are gods there. Please, don't smite me down for my insolence, as I do not profit from my stories in any other form than eternal joy._

_**A continuity note:** This story is preeceded by following episodes of "Doctor Who - Virtual Series 5": 1 - "Past Future Continuous", and 2 - "The Art of Forgetting." _

_**A little foreword:** Tiny (it is a little word, isn't it?) =) _

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**DOCTOR WHO**

VIRTUAL SERIES 5 – EPISODE 3

**THE AUGUST SKY**

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**.1. Just an Ordinary Day**

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He had found a bar stool in one of the countless rooms, full of dust, cobwebs and rubble, scattered along numerous side-corridors. He had no idea who has brought the stool to the Hub. He suspected Owen, though. It didn't matter anyway; what mattered was that when seated so high, he could comfortably watch the inside of Donna's sarcophagus. With one foot on a mesh floor and another upon the stool's leg-rest, with hands burrowed deep in his pockets, and with the coat's collar put up against the cold, he was exhaling white puffs of breath, looking down, through a thick glass of the lid, at a sleeping woman in her icy coffin.

He had never expected something like that. Especially because it was his own reaction he didn't bargain for. His own feelings. For the last few years he had been realising with increasing clarity, that he had become a dispassionate cynic, an arrogant buffoon, a calculating egoist, a cold-blooded killer. He wasn't a good man. No, this adjective had never suited him. Brave, smart, dedicated, devoted – yes. But not _good_. A long life – an endless life, artificially stretched in time, like butter spread on too much bread – did not help at all. All those deaths; oh, he had been dying so many times, but he never really died. Sex without gratification – that was his life. With all the passing years he had been losing, losing and losing people he cared for. And with all the lost people he had been shedding little pieces of his own heart. He had less and less feelings to give away, hence he had been hiding them more and more providently. Colder and colder. More and more alienated.

Oh, Rose, you hadn't thought it through, doll. Oh my pretty, naïve, silly Rose. If only you knew that I've been having dreams in which I was killing you. As if your death could overcome the curse that has been put upon me. Bad dreams. Oooh, dreams I am worth of.

And now he was there, sitting on the bar stool, wrapped up in a thick, military issue coat, his feet getting cold in his heavy boots, with a diamond of a tear in the inner corner of his left eye, and with his mouth twisted in disbelief.

Is it me? Is it still me? How did you manage to change me? You drew tears out of stone; you shattered a glass jar covering that little piece of my heart which survived centuries, millennia.

It is Wednesday, late July, a beginning of the 21 century; just an ordinary day, except for a fact, that Captain Jack Harkness has a tear in the corner of his eye. If you will not survive, if you die; no – _when_ you die; all of it will be lost, gone, dissolved in time. Another unmoored rope. A little less tears up his sleeve. A little less feelings. A little less emotions. A little less _humanity_.

That is why you _cannot_ die, Donna Noble! _You are not allowed to die_!

Her face, seen through the frosty glass, seemed unreal, as if made of wax. Tiny indicator LEDs, placed beneath the lid inside the sarcophagus, cast changeable, multicoloured dots of light upon her pale cheeks. Donna's hair, around her head on a foam pillow, burned like a corona of a supernova star. Her arms, entwined with translucent capillary tubes, rested in a mattress's indentations. Her feet were bare. They were covered with a layer of white frost. She wore colourful, stripped pyjamas. Her chest wasn't moving.

It is not a stasis chamber; we named it all too well; it is a _sarcophagus_, it is a _casket_, it is a...

_Coffin_.

Jack leant back and for a moment he stared at a dark ceiling beyond the metal lampshades. The lonely tear immediately rolled towards the outer corner of his eye and seized an opportunity to escape onto his cheek – warm on his cold skin. Jack took a deep breath, clenching fists hidden in his pockets.

He had no clue as to why he continued visiting the Freezer. It was a compulsion just as pointless as counting flagstones. He had refused to move the sarcophagus into a vault; he kept it in the Freezer, encircled by dusty implements and rusty, water-stained walls. And he was coming here every day. Still, his stubborn presence couldn't change a thing. That was why he never visited Grey. Never. He never visited his lost and found brother. So many of his people had died, and he scoffed at cemeteries, tombstones and commemorative benches. Dust in the wind, nothing but the darkness on the other side; wash it down, forget it, make busy with life, get on with new connections to the world, charm new people, use them, lose them, wash it down and forget.

Oh, Donna Noble; funny, cheeky, mad Donna; for some reason I imagined that you could understand me, that you could rest your hand upon my heart, kiss me deeply and say a few special words, that would fix me. For some reason I imagined that you were the key to Jack Harkness, his salvation.

He didn't think kindly of her the first time he met her. Oh, cynical Jack thought then, that the Doctor must have lost his intense sense of style that seemed to be his trademark in the past. Rose Tyler – gorgeous. Martha Jones – gorgeous. Donna Noble - a screaming symptom of diminished self-confidence; a background, plain wallpaper you wouldn't even notice. People like Donna were everywhere – crowd in the streets, passers by, nameless victims. He isolated from them more and more; they had nothing to do with _his_ people, _his_ world, and _his_ bloody, cocksure, calculated, cold greatness.

So, what had changed? Why was he coming here everyday and stared into her still face, fascinated by the shape of her mouth, her narrow nose, by the shadow of her long eyelashes and by minute wrinkles in corners of her eyes? What did he see in her?

The Doctor? Certainly. She was Donna Noble and she was a Time Lord, she was an incredible coincidence, a quirk of fate. But Jack didn't need to look for the Doctor's shadow in Donna's face. He had the original. He didn't need a copy.

Himself? An irritating question and a disturbing answer, suggesting both his greatness and minuteness. A false answer still. He didn't look for himself in other beings; at times he hated himself so much, he wouldn't be able to love his reflection.

A woman, who saved the world? Well, Rose saved the world, Martha did the same, Sarah Jane kept saving her planet on a daily basis. Each and every of Children of Time contributed that little bit of faith and sacrifice while saving the Earth – heroism was too common, too plain in Jack's cynical world to still provoke his emotions.

What then? Why? What for?

From the moment he had found her unconscious in her mother's house in Chiswick, a tiny bit of blood still congealed under her nose; from the moment he had lifted her from a double bed in her bedroom and carried her to a Torchwood's SUV; ever since he had faced her brilliant madness, her inner strength and fragility – he couldn't stop thinking about her. Ever since he had deposited her into the ice coffin, promising to save her, but deep inside never believing in such possibility, he hadn't been able to leave her for more than a day. He kept telling himself that it wasn't healthy. He kept promising himself to end it. And every day he kept coming back to the Freezer.

Maybe he believed that if he could save Donna, he could save himself?

"No changes?"

Jack winced and swivelled on the bar stool. Harriet Jones, wearing an elegant green two-piece dress, wrapped her arms on her chest against the cold.

"I didn't mean to startle you, Captain," she said. "Martha told me where to find you. I've let myself in. I know the way."

"No, no changes," Jack sighed. "I don't even know if I'm worried or relieved."

She came closer and rested her hand on his shoulder.

"We will find a way, Jack," she said softly. "There _has_ to be a way."

"No, there hasn't."

"Oh..."

"I'm sorry, Prime Minister." He forced a smile and gently patted tips of her fingers. "I'm loosing my manners when I'm here. We should be grateful. Funds you keep pumping into Torchwood are invaluable. But... I can't help but wonder if Torchwood is a right place to search for rescue."

"Torchwood is best prepared and equipped for such endeavour," Harriet stated. "So many times you faced an alien threat..."

"That's just it." Jack got up from the stool, shoving aside his coat's tails. "It's not a threat. It's not a war. Oh, we know war, Prime Minister; we can accept its inevitable causalities. Brave little soldiers. But it ain't no war. It's a mission of hope. And that's not in Torchwood's job description."

"Nonsense! Captain Harkness, you speak as a man, who can do nothing, but kill. And that's just... daft! Had I not know..."

"Prime Minister, Torchwood sends shell-shocked boys into fry and sacrifices them for the greater good. The sheer fact that Torchwood grades good and evil, should tell you a lot about us. Torchwood is a prison and a torture chamber. Torchwood employs euthanasia more often than it offers a cure. Torchwood is a weapon of the Earth. It has always been a weapon. It is a great big cannon pointed into the stars, refusing entry to everything that's alien. Torchwood means xenophobia and xenocide. That's what Torchwood is."

Harried moved a step back. It seemed that her face dropped, as if he put on ten years of life. Only her eyes shone angrily, surrounded by shadows of tiredness.

"I am calling you to order!" she snapped. "It's no time for self-pity!"

"I do not..."

"Yes, Torchwood is an Earth's weapon, I am well aware of the fact, as I used that weapon myself. Torchwood is this planet's shield and sword. Which means that the search for the moral path is your foremost responsibility."

"_Moral_? Ha!" Jack spread his arms. "I used to be a con-man, Harriet! The only morality I knew served my own personal convenience."

"That was a long time ago."

"Under me Torchwood kept sinking into deeper and deeper darkness, and when I tried to change my ways, I lost two of my friends. How am I qualified to save anybody?"

"Enough, Jack!" Harriet dropped her shoulders, clenching her fists. "Nobody's perfect!"

"Nobody?"

"Do you think _he's_ perfect?" She surprised Jack so much with her question, he stopped still, his blue eyes open wide. "Do you really think so? I bet he doesn't. In that casket over there lies the needle of his moral compass, Jack, and without her your _perfect_ Doctor is but a dangerous natural force, an unpredictable value in an equation, a threat to this country and to the whole world. Just as you are without your men. Oh, you are so much alike, the Doctor and you. Boys and monsters."

"We are not alike!" Jack shouted angrily. "We are not alike; if we were, he wouldn't leave... Shit, sorry... Prime Minister, I'm having a damned bad day. Please, excuse me."

Harriet sighed deeply, moved closer and grabbed his elbow.

"It's terribly cold, here. I wouldn't say no to a cup of coffee... But not Mickey's; the other boy, Ianto, he makes excellent espresso..."

She dragged him towards the Freezer's exit.

"You are not a bad man, Jack, nor a heartless war machine," she said, walking close to him, huddled to his arm. "But I will agree with one thing. You are a soldier, Jack. You won't avoid a battle and you won't hesitate to strike. Oh, the world certainly needs its dreamers, doctors, pacifists, bleeding-hearts, visionaries and artists. But it also needs its warriors. It's hard to choose the path that wouldn't swerve into darkness, because war leaves its imprint in all of us. But still we try."

She gave him a pale smile.

"Look at your men, Jack," she whispered. "A boy next door. A police woman. A physician. A lover. A husband. And a man on a quest. You are not a bunch of murderers and torturers. You are simply a first line of defence. Plus, you are... how do you say it? Pretty?"

"Gorgeous." Jack smiled back at her. "Certainly one of the most important qualifications... Oh, we've been in such a good place after the Earth was returned to the Solar System..."

"And now everything seems... bad?" she asked.

"And now it seems that the world is falling into pieces. The Rift's activity increases continually; we are short of resources to control it. And Donna... What are we supposed to _do_?"

"Don't lose your hope, Jack." She squeezed his elbow.

Harkness paused suddenly, facing her. He had to bend down for their eyes to be on the same level.

"Don't tell me you don't understand, Harriet," he whispered. "You have been there as well. In that dark place. Both of us have been there."

She nodded briefly.

"We are just human, Jack. We have our dark places. And we have strength to resurface."

"_She's_ my surface."

"I understand, Jack," Harriet said. "I'm sorry."

"No!" He shook his head. "Don't say you're sorry; don't even suggest she might not make it..."

"No, Jack." Harriet shook her head as well, greyish hair bouncing around her face. She smiled cheekily. "That's not what I meant. It's just... Donna...? You...? Not very likely."

"Oh, I wouldn't be so sure." With a shrug he entered the Hub's main hall. "She really fancies me, you know?"

Two bodyguards, standing near the circular gateway; both with their hands folded at their crotch level and with their bodies stiff with Kevlar corsets; providently pretended that they didn't notice Jack, and even if they were to notice him, they wouldn't give a damn. One of the bodyguards, dark-eyed and tawny-skinned, was _gorgeous_ enough to bring a dimple of a smile to Jack's cheek. Ianto glared at him from over the huge pile of files he had saved from a ruined archive. Harkness's smile disappeared.

"You've got some major repairs here?" said Harriet, looking round the Hub – at crumbling walls, yellowish tiles peeling here and there; bunches of wiring crackling with sparks; makeshift scaffoldings in spots where balustrades had collapsed; and shattered mirrors of the water sculpture's column.

"We've got some major _problems_," Jack corrected. "Ianto, can we count on some industrial strength espresso?"

"Sure. Excuse our styrofoam cups, Prime Minister. What Mickey hadn't manage to break, shattered last Friday. Aah, we don't have any milk as well."

"Never mind, I do not take milk." Harriet gave Ianto a warm smile and then did something so much in her nature, it shouldn't come as a shock anymore. Yet Jack was still surprised to hear her next words: "What about you, boys? Would you like a cup... sorry... a styrofoam cup of coffee?"

Bodyguards swayed slightly in their surprise.

"No, thanks, ma'am, it's OK, really, we're fine, thank you," they babbled. Jack grinned at their embarrassment.

"Nonsense!" Harriet took her industrial strength espresso from Ianto's hands and waved the cup towards bodyguards. "It's an excellent coffee. How many sugars, son?"

After a while both bodyguards stood there completely out of their balance, with one hand still at the crotch level, gripping styrofoam cups in the other. Harriet seemed satisfied with a work well done. She winked at Jack.

"Office?"

He turned his eyes to a brightly lit room upstairs, with what used to be a glass wall, and now was a mass of glass splinters, crunching unpleasantly under his boots.

"I can't guarantee comfort or privacy," he warned. "War has its rights."

"I don't mind," Harriet answered. "Never cared much for comforts and our secrets are not so secret anymore. I can't recall Cardiff being in the media as often as nowadays. The whole country... the whole world is talking about you, Jack. Oh, well, at least I don't have to keep my Welsh connections under the wrappers – I have hundreds of reasons to be here. Shame they're so awful, though."

"Jack, a moment?" Ianto interrupted from behind a row of screens, where he hid after making coffee for everyone. "It's the Rift. Take a look at these charts, ok? Low-pressure areas? See, the computer says such an atmospheric circulation is not even possible."

"That's what I mean," Harriet sighed. "Storms... Are they results of the Rift's activity?"

"Them and much more," Jack answered. "Oh, yeah, the storm is coming, and it won't be an ordinary storm."

"I figure," she sighed again. "This city is unlucky. It's as you were living on a tectonic fault line, just waiting for the earthquake. Only nobody knows that. I feel guilty. We should make it known, I don't know, evacuate people?"

"Evacuation is not an option even for cities like Los Angeles or San Francisco, Prime Minister," Ianto said. "And the people know more you would have guessed. It's not London. Please, leave it to Torchwood."

Jack glared at him, but Harriet just smiled and nodded.

"All right. Something tells me I'm leaving Cardiff in good hands."

"Let's go upstairs," Jack said. "What is it you wanted to talk about?"

She looked him in the eye and started up the stairs without a further word.

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**To be continued...**


	2. Melody Eternal

_To everyone keeping me company on this journey, THANK YOU!_

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**.2. Melody Eternal**

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A few snowflakes touched down on his outstretched arm. Those that landed on his palm melted almost immediately, but some snowflakes settled on a sleeve of his coat. Unique in their fragile beauty. The Doctor made a few steps forward, wading in a knee-deep fluff, sweeping the snow with a hem of his coat. He halted and took a deep breath of clear, frosty air. This world was magnificent – whiteness carved with blue shadows, under a milky sky, slightly coloured with golden sunrays. Voluminous, grey clouds were passing above, like herds of gigantic animals.

The Doctor looked back at Theta, who was waiting next to the TARDIS's door. Somehow there was a fleeting moment of surprise at a sight of the Ood in his grey clothing; some tiny part of the Doctor's mind expected to see Donna standing there, bare arms crossed on her chest and covered in goose-bumps, and an expression of disappointment on her pursed lips. Immediately his memory offered him a vision of her face, encircled by wavy hair and by a fur rimmed hood. Never did she look more beautiful than at that very moment – fiery on the background of an almost monochromatic landscape. He hadn't realised it at that point; he was memorising an amazing woman in picturesque scenery; but all he could see then was Donna Noble from Chiswick, London, a citizen of Earth, so irritating with all her fussiness, and with lack of appropriate admiration.

"And? Anything?" he asked.

The Ood shook his head slowly. He carefully lifted up his translator ball, filled with sea-blue fluorescence of the Cells.

"I didn't expect them to be compatible," he said.

_Compatible_? It was a word almost certainly offered to him by the Cells, still speaking the language of the _Emporium Everdream_, a computer program from a far away moon in the Triangalla system.

"Maybe we are too far from the Oods' population centres?" the Doctor suggested.

"Distance shouldn't be an issue. The connection encompasses the whole planet. No, it's because of the broken thread." Theta's shoulders sagged even more.

"A little patience." The Doctor met Theta's gaze and broke off sheepishly. He just tried to teach patience to one of the most patient beings in the universe; he, a man rather poorly qualified in that area. "Let's just wait."

He sniffled and turned again to face the majestic landscape of the Ood Sphere. His brow was furrowed. He needed a happy ending, he needed it so much, but he knew that not all endings _could_ be happy. Theta still stuck around the TARDIS. It seemed that her blue planks offered him some security. Snow sparkled like mounds of diamonds.

Music burst out unexpectedly, indescribably powerful, moving from nothingness into a crescendo of recognition, salutation and joy. Thousands of individual voices chirruped and screamed for a while, just like instruments being keyed before a great concert; then a motif appeared and dragged along subsequent voices, while leaving others in counterpoints and their harmonics, emphasizing the basic theme. The Doctor swayed, as if lashed by a sudden gust of wind. He stepped back, struggling against the urge to plug his ears. What good would it do against a telepathic symphony anyway? He looked back and saw Theta kneeling in a deep snow, clutching his temples with both his hands. The translator rested next to him, on top of a snowdrift, glowing with an intense shade of indigo – the Cells' colour the Doctor had never seen before.

"Theta!"

His scream didn't even scratch the wall of sounds. He reached his friend in three long jumps and bent over him, alarmed.

"Theta! Are you all right?"

The Ood looked up, his eyes completely glazed.

"Doctor..."

"Theta!" Pulling him by the arms, the Doctor opened the TARDIS's door with a toe of his trainer. "Get inside, Theta! Quickly! Move it!"

"No... Doctor... This is..." The Ood pushed away his helping hands. "This is _beautiful_."

"Noisy!" the Doctor yelled.

"What?"

"Not too noisy?"

"Salutation," Theta said. He wasn't gripping his temples anymore, but remained on his knees in the snow. "Longing and joy of return. A hero. Gratitude. Oooo..."

A long note, and then sounds descending, like glass beads rolling down the stairs – little crystals of melancholy.

"Sorrow," the Ood summed up the obvious. "Longing. A return, but just a half-return. Doctor-Donna is back, but not complete, not whole. Fragment. Just as it had been sung."

The Doctor's mouth twitched.

"Bereavement," Theta said. "Mourning."

Several voices started climbing up the harmonic steps, and after a while a whole wave rose into chirruping trills.

"Memory, memory, gratitude and joy. In the song, forever, melody eternal, memory and gratitude."

The Doctor slumped onto the snow next to Theta.

"And I thought it would be hard for _you_," he said, his voice flat.

"Joy, joy, memory, salutation."

"Can they hear you?" the Doctor asked. His shoulders were hunching more and more under the weight of the Oods' song. "Tell them to stop."

"Joy, gratitude, memory..."

"Stop it! Just _stop it_!"

The Ood blinked once, quickly and reached for his translator ball. Suddenly the symphony died out. In silence, hesitantly, a capella, sang Theta's mind-voice. It was singing about sadness and surrender, about long hopeless days. Violent, fitful notes painted a serious malfunction in the Adventure Emporium, and pain caused by the Cells. Meanders of sounds and emotions described meeting with the Doctor, his journey through adventures, struggle against forgetting. A melancholic adagio marked the death of the computer and the Cells. Mad staccato for the birth of new Cells, journey in the TARDIS, landing on the Ood Sphere. And then hesitant, trembling question; a supplication.

After a long silence mixed sounds appeared, again resembling keying of the instruments before a symphonic concert.

"They don't know what to think," Theta translated. "They are afraid of strangers. They like the Cells' song, but they are distrustful. They trust the Doctor, but their fear is equally strong. They remember humans. They remember the pain of separation and broken threads. They have hope. The Doctor is their hope."

And there was no Doctor-Donna anymore. Just the Doctor. He inclined his head to hide an expression on his face.

"They made you sad," Theta continued. "They are sorry. They will accept the Cells if the Doctor will vouch for them. They will not make him sad again."

"No... It's not that..." the Doctor murmured. "It's just... oww... I think... My migraine is starting... oww... again..."

"You spent too much time with the Cells." Theta, alarmed, grabbed the Doctor's arm, saving him from falling into the snow. "Your mind is open and fragile. I'll ask them to quiet down."

"No..." the Doctor whispered, his lips pale. "Ask them to sing... to sing Donna's song..."

"They are causing you pain," Theta protested in sudden silence.

"Sweet pain," the Doctor answered.

"You said you didn't like pain."

"Just one song. Please."

It seemed that grey silhouettes emerged from under the snow. After a while Theta and the Doctor were surrounded by a circle of maybe fifty Oods, fixing their large, slanting eyes on them.

"They are asking if you are sure of it," Theta, quite unnecessary, translated their thoughts.

"Oh, yes." Still on his knees in the snow, the Doctor turned to the Oods. "Yes. Please," he thought.

After a brief moment of hesitation the Oods' minds started singing about Donna. The Doctor endured that sweet pain up until he realised, that he was curled on the icy ground, alone, except for Theta, who had stayed by his side, and now was shaking him anxiously.

"Oww... It's... It's all right... It's... oww..." the Doctor mumbled, sitting up. "Did they go?"

"The connection is too strong," Theta explained. "The Cells opened your mind, and it is not safe for you. They left, so they wouldn't harm you."

"Sweet harm," the Doctor murmured. "And you? Are they going to accept you? Can you stay with them? What about the Cells?"

"Yes!" Theta was positively beaming. "They came to like the Cells' song. They can hear my thoughts, and I can hear theirs. I can stay, Doctor. I have a home. Thank you, thank you."

"You're very welcome, but it's all the _Emporium Everdream's_ doing, not mine... Ooooww... Now that's a _real_ migraine!"

Theta helped him up and brushed the snow off the Doctor's coat.

"Stay," he asked. "The Oods will refrain from singing until your sensitivity returns to normal."

"Eeeerm..." The Doctor smiled; a little, sad smile of a man, who turns from his friends and leaves the party a long before its end, knowing that the fun will continue after he's gone, as if he never existed. "Tell them I am very grateful for their song, and for remembering me, Theta."

"Do you really want to do _this_?" asked Theta hesitantly.

The Doctor inhaled through his narrow nose, pushing both hands in his trousers' pockets.

"I dunno," he answered. He opened the TARDIS's door and hesitated on a threshold. "Every man is a sum of his memories. But sometimes... memories are just not enough..."

"Good luck," said the Ood seriously.

"Same to you!"

The Doctor walked into his blue box and let the TARDIS sing her own song.

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**To be continued...**


	3. A Standstill

_There's not much of bang-whoosh-kaboom in this story (yet), I know. But there's a bit of lovely Cardiff I hope to visit soon again (just to recharge my batteries with some Rift's energy). This chapter is for Wilfred Mott, a Grandfather extraordinaire, one of my favourite characters. And, of course, for you. Thanks a lot for first reviews. And here we go... _

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**.3. A Standstill**

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Wilfred stood by the window, looking out at _Bae Caerdydd_. Torchwood paid for his accommodation – a cold, modern apartment, with glazed walls, letting in the cool blueness of the sky and greyness of the water. There was an antique merry-go-round swivelling in front of the Pierhead Building; people kept crowding on the embankment; a water sculpture, towering over the Hub, reflected sunrays and redirected them to the Wales Millennium Centre's calligraphic front. There was life there; some form of life; even if to Wilf it seemed more like a moving picture on a newfangled, plasma TV's screen. In his apartment everything was in a standstill. He didn't even try to overcome the frigidity of a designer's interior – just one look at aggressive combination of colours; at exclusive, modernistic furniture; at incomprehensible appliances behind the kitchen island – and Wilf gave up without a fight. Whatever it was supposed to be – a temporary harbour, a waiting room, a hotel apartment, a weird dream – such interior could never become a home.

"I've made you some tea." Martha came closer carrying two mugs, and handed one of them to Wilfred. "I've checked your fridge. Do you eat at all?"

"There's a chip-shop by the pier," Wilf said. "Sometimes I order pizza."

"Pepperoni? Ianto always orders pepperoni for me."

"Hmm? Yes. I guess."

"Wilfred," Martha gently touched the old man's shoulder. "Starving yourself won't help Donna. I'll pop in tomorrow, and cook a real dinner, yeah? Well, all right, I'll nuke something in the microwave. Cooking's not my strong suit."

"Oh, you doctors and scientists." Wilf gave her a pale smile. He finally turned his gaze away from Cardiff Bay. He walked to a sofa and sank in its brown, leather softness. "You can extract an appendix, but you can't peel spuds."

Martha sat in the armchair opposite him. She had longer, softly curling hair now. Her beautiful eyes were full of concern.

"A gorgeous girl," Wilf thought. "This gorgeous girl could have smashed the Earth into one million pieces; all she had to do was use that Oster-whats-his-name key. Such a tiny and fragile, gorgeous girl. My Donna had never been so fragile. But it was Donna who drew the short straw."

For a while Wilf was almost angry at Martha. She had travelled with the Doctor too, but unlike Donna, she was reasonable enough to say "no" just in time.

"How did you manage last Friday?" Martha asked. "Any damages?"

"All the light bulbs shattered, and I think the TV in the bedroom bought it; it's either that or I can't set up the blooming digibox." Wilf shrugged. "I got the wind up, that's all. Do you know that waves were reaching my window?"

"A lot of rubbish washed on the shore," Martha said.

"_Alien_ rubbish?" After all he had witnessed, Wilf still found it hard to believe in presence of the Rift and in signs of alien life.

Martha nodded.

"We had our hands full with it." She smiled. "You know what's really annoying? Most of this rubbish will turn out to be... I don't know... hairdryers and fryers. Or weapons," she added hesitantly. "Ninety percent of all our finds proves to be useless trash. But then there are real treasures. Take the universal decoder; it will decode anything; let some thieve put his hands on that toy, and he could empty all the accounts in all the banks around the world, and not leave even a single trace. And the day before yesterday I found this."

She reached out and placed something on the glossy surface of the low table. It reminded an exotic shell, made of mellowed metal, tinted green.

"No idea," she sighed. "But when I touch it, very gently, it radiates light and scent. Both of them absolutely harmless."

"Why are you telling me this, girl?" Wilf asked. If she wanted to distract him from his granddaughter, she'd chosen a failing strategy.

"Give it a try," Martha said.

"What?"

"Touch it."

Wilfred shook his head. The shell was beautiful; its spiralling outgrowths glimmered with sapphire and pastel green. Still, he could see no reason to touch it.

"Wilf," Martha leaned forward in her armchair. "Just hold it. Please."

With a puff of irritation, Wilf put the tea mug aside, and picked up the shell. It was heavy and pleasantly cold.

"Move your fingers across, like that, very gently," Martha directed.

The shell began to glow. Light radiation surrounded it like a cloud – gold and turquoise, flowing into deep purple, darkening and then exploding with spirals of crimson and gold. It smelled of freshly mown grass and something sweet; maybe apple-pie.

"Yeeeeaaah..." Wilf said. "That's... nice... but..."

"Just wait," Martha interrupted. "That's a default, a factory setting. Don't stop stroking it."

"Martha..."

"Oh, please, do it for me."

The light was now rusty, changing into that faintest shade of approaching night on a lovely, summer twilight. And the smell was familiar – a water in a lake, weeds by the shore, a bonfire's smoke, jasmine? Somebody's presence; somebody's warm skin, fresh and pulsating with life and youth? Martha was watching Wilf with her huge eyes. Embarrassed, he put the shell down and reached for his mug. His tea was stone cold.

"What?" he stammered. "How... how long...?"

"Half an hour," Martha answered. "How are you feeling?"

"I... ehm... I feel fine... _very_ good!" Wilf gave the shell, sitting innocently on the table, a distrustful glance. "What is it? I mean, really?"

"An Air Wick." Martha shrugged. "An equivalent of a mood candle or one of those diffusers you plug into the wall socket. It's just a bit more advanced. It tunes itself to your mood and produces best suited fragrances and colours, to help you calm down and relax. At least that's what we think."

"That's... lovely..." Wilf murmured. "Why did you bring it here?"

"You have a weak heart, Wilfred. I know, 'cause I've scanned you... oh, sorry, I shouldn't have, but you looked so miserable, I started worrying. No, no, no, you are all right," she said immediately. "You are not sick, just overtired and overstressed. And stress and tiredness are killers in your age. I can't order you to rest, to eat better, and not think about Donna, so I brought you the Cornucopia."

"Corn-nu-whata-who?"

"We've named it a Horn of Plenty. A Cornucopia," Martha gave him a wide smile. "It's Ianto; he names those... _gizmos_ all the time. He should be writing comic books scenarios, our Ianto. Well, Mickey wanted to call it a Smell Shell, so you can see why we've chosen a Cornucopia."

"Ye...ah?"

"Every night, before going to sleep, a séance with the Cornucopia," Martha said in an unmistakable tone of a doctor advising her patient.

"You don't want me to think about Donna?" There was anger in Wilfred's voice.

"Wilfred," Martha rubbed her forehead. "It may take a while. It may take a _very long_ while. We're doing our best, but, so far, we don't even know what we're looking for. Each and every item in that pile of rubbish, which washed on a shore last Friday, may help us cure Donna. But then again, maybe hairdryers and fryers are all we've got. You have to be patient. And you have to take care of yourself. Regain your strength."

Wilf felt a momentary urge to throw Cornucopia through the huge window; to sink it in the waves whence it came from.

"Doing your best, are you?! Martha Jones, even _he_ doesn't know what he's doing! I remember what he said when he brought her home. One second of memory and Donna's mind would burn. But what if... if her mind's burned already? What if my little girl is not there anymore... just... just that strange person... a bit of a Time Lord, a bit of a human...? What good can all those... _gizmos_ do?!"

"I don't know," Martha said. Her mouth twitched dolefully. "None of us knows. But we're not giving up."

"You have enough on your plate!" He turned away, upset. "All them hellish storms, and underground tremors, and them shadows – shadows on the streets – and new diseases, and what else. You've shelved Donna, that's what; you've put her away on top of that _deal with_ _in the second instance_ pile of cases. And the Doctor did the same! You say all of you're doing your best, but it's only _you_ Martha, my child, it's just you! And he won't even call; won't even ask about her. Won't even..."

"Wilfred," Martha whispered. "Please."

"All right. I can play with that Corn-on-a-cobia of yours before I go to sleep, what does it matter? None of you knows what else we could do. And if even the Doctor doesn't know... What're the odds you'll find that one, special contraption in all that junk? And what're the odds you'll even _understand_ what it'll be for?"

Martha bit her lips.

"Look, I was on the planet Messaline with Donna," she spoke suddenly, her voice strong and clear. "And we've met during the ATMOS crisis. I know her. Your Donna is a great woman, Wilfred. A strong woman. Do you realise how much I wanted to hate her for... you know, for taking my place... and all that? But it's impossible not to love her. She's my friend. Trust me, I won't stop trying to find something that'd help her, even if I had to turn the bottom of the bay with a rake. And Jack won't stop. Or Mickey. I spoke with Sarah Jane yesterday. Luke, her son, had a few ideas; they are trying to analyse them together now. Harriet Jones popped in earlier today. She's backing up Torchwood with funds and support, even though the government had never interfered with the Crown's enterprises..."

"But the Doctor didn't call?"

"No." Martha's lips twitched again.

"You know, child, maybe my daughter was right," Wilf said with a sigh. "When she judged the Doctor. Maybe she was right."

"I'm sure that the Doctor..." Martha began, absolutely refusing to admit that Sylvia could have been right in anything at all.

"Doesn't matter." Wilf shook the Cornucopia. "Are you sure it won't scramble my brain?"

Martha got up from her armchair, smoothing out her dress.

"No. I'm not." She laughed briefly. "And you better not tell Jack I've given it to you. He's terribly jumpy about taking objects out of the Hub."

She nodded her head at Wilf.

"I've got to go, I've pushed it already; it was supposed to be a lunch-break. I'll pop in tomorrow, as promised. D'you like Chinese?"

"I like _Englise_, child."

"Bangers and mash, and peas, and gravy then," laughed Martha. "And then, hmmm, bread and butter pudding?"

"Wonderful," said Wilf, seeing her to the door. "I'll be waiting."

"OK, it's a date." She winked at him and closed the door behind her. The elderly man smiled weakly. He walked back to the lounge, shoulders hunched, dragging his legs, seated the Cornucopia in the middle of the table top and sank in the sofa. He was staring at the shell with a crestfallen expression on his face. All his life he watched the stars and would give anything to come into possession of an alien artefact.

He'd give _anything_, but not Donna. Not Donna.

* * *

**To be continued...**

* * *


	4. Angels and Weevils

_They keep killing them and yet Torchwood lives!_

_**Disclaimer:** If I owned them, I wouldn't kill them, obviously. Because (as Buffy would say) it's **wrong**. Sob!_

* * *

**.4. Angels and Weevils**

* * *

A black SUV turned on a long driveway and came to a sudden halt, shingle crunching under its massive tyres. Rain drops on its windscreen sparkled in rays of setting sun, breaking through a rift between a hilltop and a ridge of storm clouds. A creature, standing a few steps away from the vehicle's bonnet, tilted its head, as if listening to something. Its dark, sunken eyes stared at the SUV with ghastly pungency. Its lips moved slightly upwards, baring fangs of a predator.

"Come to daddy, love," Jack said quietly, letting go of the steering wheel and reaching for the anti-weevil spray.

Gwen shrugged, wrenched her eyes away from the creature and glanced at Harkness with deepest dismay. "Disgusting."

"No more than the others," Jack snorted.

"Not the Weevil. What you've just said. That was disgusting. Where did it come from? Come to_ daddy_?"

Jack bridled up. "Are we going to discuss my punch-lines now?"

"Punch-lines?" Gwen moaned.

"Jests. Witty remarks. Caustic comments."

Ianto leaned forward from the back seat of the SUV. "They're my job, anyway," he noted. "It went left."

"What?"

"The Weevil. Left. In between a witty remark and a caustic comment."

Gwen rolled her eyes.

"Do we know what's there?" Jack asked, pretending to be calm.

"Mickey coordinates," Ianto answered. "So – no."

"When did he lose us?"

"About fifteen minutes ago, when we turned right at the lights."

"Can somebody remind me why do we keep him?"

There was a momentary silence.

"_Riiiight_," Gwen said finally. "Are we going?"

"_You're_ staying in the car."

"You're not going to tell me where to go and where to stay, Jack!"

"So maybe I'll call Rhys and get his opinion?"

"Rhys won't be telling me what to do either!"

"Considering the fact that he's a father to your unborn child, he should have his say, don't you think?"

"Do I, as a mother to my unborn child, have my say about anything at all?"

"No."

"_No_, is it?"

"Do we still want to catch that Weevil?" Ianto asked.

"_Yes_!" Gwen and Jack yelled at him, swivelling in their seats.

The woman shook back her mane of thick, dark hair, opened the door and lightly jumped down onto the gravel.

"Gwen!" There was a warning in Jack's voice.

She unzipped her short jacket and reached to a holster underneath.

"_Gwen_!" Jack repeated, the warning in his voice even more urgent. "I'm not joking!"

"That's the problem," she said, producing a gun.

"Real problems start when he _tries_ to joke," Ianto corrected, getting out of the SUV as well.

"_Et tu, Brute_?" Jack could only follow them, the anti-weevil spray in one hand and the revolver in the other. "I remember how it used to be," he growled. "Nobody questioned me; you'd go, where I wanted you to go. And now everybody wants to be a boss. I have to deal with a police-woman, constantly pissed off because of her morning sickness; a hysterical daddy-to-be; a bloody loudmouth in a suit; a doctor too cute to be yelled at; and a council estate boy. I'm starting to feel out of place."

"I've got a bottle of excellent whiskey stashed in the office," said Ianto, without looking back at him.

"Tonight." Jack responded instantly.

"It's a date, then," Ianto confirmed.

Gwen rolled her eyes again, a little smile in the corners of her mouth. Gravel crunched under her trainers as she ran left, through a narrow clearing in between two rows of wild bushes. She shoved tangled twigs aside and found herself in a real junkyard, which, in some distant past, must have been a large garden. Beyond a line of trees, bushes, cars' skeletons and dead bodies of fridges, chairs and sofas, there was a ruined house. It was spreading its wings against gloomy sky, threatening with darkness living in its broken windows. Gwen didn't even falter. She hasn't been afraid of such places for quite a while now. Working for Torchwood meant that sooner or later you landed in that kind of a desolate, weird house. Hearing a monster breathe behind you.

Jack pushed his way through the tangle, wrenching his coat from the grip of huckleberry bushes. He gave Gwen an irritated look, but didn't say a word. He just moved the barrel of his revolver: _Go right, I'll take the left wing_. Ianto took the middle; a brand new and never-used-before matt-black Glock in his hand. They started approaching the house quickly but stealthily, finding cover behind all the rubbish scattered around.

"Jack!" Gwen halted suddenly, moving her index finger to the gun's safety catch. "Have you seen that?"

"_I've_ seen that," Ianto gasped. "Damn, Jack, this building is _moving_!"

"There," Gwen's eyes kept jerking from one bleak window to another. "And there. And there. How many of them are in there? Jack?"

"Too many," he answered; his voice flat with tension.

"Just once I've seen so many Weevils in one spot," Ianto mumbled. "Just once. When..."

"Yeah, we can remember, thanks, Ianto," Gwen hissed.

Jack inhaled sharply through his clenched teeth.

"What do we do?" Ianto asked.

"I'll take three hundred on the right and you'll take seven hundred and fifty on the left." Gwen growled.

"Funny how quickly you've counted them," Ianto countered immediately.

Jack turned to them, fury on his face. They stepped back instinctively. They haven't seen him so angry for quite a long time now.

"It's not funny," he said quietly. "It's _really_ not funny."

"No. Well, no, it isn't. No, you're right, it's not," Gwen and Ianto murmured sheepishly. It was Jack Harkness after all, their undying boss, the man, they knew so little about. And he could be scary.

"The SUV," Jack said. "Now."

They pushed their way through the thicket back to the gravelled driveway. Trying to be as quiet as possible. Next to the SUV Gwen wiped the sweat off her brow and leaned against the vehicle's bonnet, not quite certain if her legs would bear her.

"What now?"

"Now we need an army." Jack pushed his revolver into a leather holster. "Put me through to the UNIT."

Ianto was already in the car, his fingers flitting over the laptop's keyboard.

"What are they doing there?" Gwen whispered. "What d'ya think? Are they up to something?"

"Or guarding something," Harkness snapped. "Or they just squat there. Or they're planning an invasion. How, the hell, shall I know?"

"Jack!" Ianto leaned out of the SUV, two fingers on a miniature earphone inside his ear. "Jack!"

Harkness waved his hand at him, trying to quiet him down, but as he looked at Ianto's face, his anger subsided immediately, giving way to fear.

"Jack, it's the Hub!" Ianto shouted. "I can only hear... Somebody's screaming... Jack!"

Gwen wrenched the car's door open and pulled her own screen, connecting to the Torchwood's base. Jack jumped behind the wheel.

"What's going on there?"

"Somebody's shooting," Gwen stuttered. "No... They're explosions... Oh, my God, Jack... I can't get through to them!"

"Martha? Mickey?" Jack was pressing his own earphone into his ear, trying to make something out in the cacophony coming from the Hub. "What's going on? Martha? Martha Jones, what's your status? Martha? Martha?!"

"Just drive!" Gwen jumped into the passenger's seat. Her face was ghastly pale under the tangle of her dark hair.

Harkness grabbed the steering wheel and the gear lever. The SUV's engine roared. Fountains of gravel shot in front of its bonnet, as tyres spun in reverse gear. The back of the vehicle crashed into a high embankment, wheels turned, the engine roared again, and the SUV shot forward like a black predator beast. Gwen felt the acceleration pressing her into her seat. At the back of the vehicle Ianto was struggling with his safety belt.

The computer on Gwen's lap coughed up and for a second a picture broke through the white noise on its screen. The woman uttered a loud scream and covered her mouth with her hand. She looked at Jack with a corner of her eye.

"What?!" he yelled.

"Mickey..." she whispered. "Oh, Jack, it's Mickey..."

"What?!" he repeated, his fingers closed so tightly on the steering wheel, his knuckles turned white. "What've you seen?! What?!"

"He..." Gwen couldn't utter her worst fears. What she saw, just for a split second, could well have been just a figment of her imagination, just a fear inducted illusion. "Mickey..."

"For fuck's sake, Gwen, say it, what's wrong with Mickey?!" Jack dropped all manners.

"Something killed him," Gwen whispered, her lips trembling.

"Something _killed_..." Ianto, at the back of the SUV, tried to jump up, but he slumped back in his seat, held back by the inerta-reel safety belt.

"I don't know, I don't know!" shouted Gwen, now crying openly. She hit her hand against the useless screen, and then she started pummelling it with both her fists, as if crushing it could help. The SUV was speeding along narrow, suburban streets, striking out sparks on speed bumps. It made a sharp turn, taking along a yellow, plastic pylon separating the lanes.

"I don't know what it was, I don't know, I couldn't see, I don't know!"

"Gwen," Jack said, trying to remain calm. "Gwen... Gwen!"

She let the hair fall across her face, hiding her tears and her fear. When she brushed it away with her hand, in an angry gesture, her face resembled a mask. She looked at Jack with huge, wild eyes of a hounded animal.

"Gwen?" he repeated.

"It was dark," she said. "There were sparks. An electric arch. There... there was something... An alien creature... It looked as if it was drawing energy straight from the Rift Manipulator. And then it turned it towards Mickey... It burnt him... Oh, my God... It burnt Mickey..."

The SUV jumped red lights, cut across the sidewalk, scattering people getting out of a pub. The vehicle's wheels fell from the curb with a thud, as it returned on the road, its back swinging in a controlled skid.

"Ianto...?" said Jack from behind the wheel.

"If you keep up the pace we'll be there in half an hour," Ianto answered.

Harkness stepped heavily on the gas pedal.

"The creature?" he asked dryly, pretending to be concentrated solely on driving. "How did it look like, Gwen?"

Gwen put both hands against the dashboard. She was looking straight ahead, with a scowl, and with growing determination.

"Gwen?" Jack repeated.

She opened her mouth, hesitated and then spoke quietly:

"Like an angel."

* * *

**To be continued...**


	5. Tumbling Down the Well

_LuckyBlackCat - contents of the Doctor's pockets - I really needed it. Thanks!_

* * *

**.5. Tumbling Down the Well**

* * *

Inside the blue box the Doctor faltered. There had been a moment of beauty there – under the Ood Sphere's marble-grey sky – with the song and the memory; but all that was left now, was a painful noise. The Doctor leaned on the steering panel, hanging down his sore head.

"Some day my lifestyle is going to kill me," he moaned sarcastically, as he reached to the TARDIS's instruments and prepared for a take-off. "All that running and sticking my head where it shouldn't be stuck. Yeah, that's final. One day I have to stop running."

"And start chasing," a little voice in his head added immediately.

"_I feel sorry for you_," the TARDIS sang. "_I don't really know what a headache is, but it can't be light-speed-pleasant-timewarp-energy-good_."

"Thank you, my old girl," the Doctor thought back.

"_Put your feet up, and relax, and let me take you forward, and forward, and forward, as I've always done, across the vortex, into an endless harmony of timelines and space-paths, to chose from, to dance upon, to lose yourself and to forget your loneliness, your guilt, your pain, and your pride, and your constant hope that some day, somebody will prove you wrong_," the TARDIS hummed, her wonderful engines picking up the cosmic rhythm. "_We are alone in the universe, Doctor, we are so alone, we are the last two in existence, we are those they left behind, we are brilliant and we are mad, and we are all alone_."

"Yeah, I knew that, thank you," the Doctor muttered, flipping several levers. "By the way, if I try to save telepathic plankton by connecting it directly to my thought-stream again, can somebody, please, smack me? Hard. Actually, they can knock me unconscious."

"_It's just a crush-meltdown-hunger-dark-untwining-collision_," the TARDIS sing-sang dismissively. "_You'll be energy-speed-whoosh soon enough, just wait and see_."

"No, it's not," the Doctor protested. "It's not temporary, and it's not just a passing mood. I am wrong, and the world is wrong, and you are the _wrongest_ of all. Can't you feel it? That... _gritting_... gritting in your engines. I can almost taste it. _Bleurghh_!" he shook his head like a wet dog. "It tastes, sort of, like marzipan – one that spent too much time in the sun. On the beach. All sticky and covered in sand. Just like crunching, and sweet, and funny-taste-must-have-gone-off marzipan."

He hesitated with his hand hovering over the date selector.

"I could go there to do it now, nothing to stop me, see, except..." he sighed and rolled his tongue inside his mouth, turning his eyes upwards and messing his hair, absolutely unaware of how _crazy_ it made him look. "I'm wrong. I _know_ I am. I don't feel like myself at all, didn't feel like myself ever since the Cells upside-downed my memories, no, even before that... There is something cosmically wrong with me and with the world. So... Am I going to fix it? Or am I going to break it even further? Hmmm?"

For a split second his face adapted the very same, half-questioning, half-amused look his first incarnation wore, when pondering difficult tasks. There was even that smidgeon of grumpiness, so typical to his elderly self, when he was still young.

"_Nothing to stop you_," the TARDIS sang. "_Nothing to stop me. Let's see how far we can go. Let's go to the end of time. Let's go to the beginning of time. Let's disintegrate in the void of creation and destruction_."

"Tempting," the Doctor said. "But no."

He withdrew his hand from the controls and stepped back from the panel.

"I think I need some sleep," he sighed. "Oww, not much for sleeping, me. But a must is a must. I have to separate myself from all the distractions, all the chit-chat, that unceasing whispering of the universe. Right. Zero room it is, then. I just need to find it."

And now he seemed very young and very lost. He looked around quickly, flustered, as if not quite recognising the ship's interior.

"The thing is I don't seem to remember the way. It'll be somewhere deep inside the ship. In the area that hasn't been used for centuries. But where is inside... _no! Wait_!" He hit his forehead with the heel of his hand hard enough to leave a red mark. "No zero room! It's got jettisoned. Disengaged. Discharged. Demolished. Destructed. Deducted. Refracted... Ooops, _that's not good_!"

"_If the world is slurring-falling-falling-falling-emptying-malfunctioning, you have to refuel-tweak-cheat-repair it_," the TARDIS announced.

"Yeah, and who's gonna fix _me_?" the Doctor moaned.

"_You are a measure of clarity and madness_," his ship sang powerfully. "_There's no one to tell the difference_."

"No one to know, if the god is almighty or mad." The Doctor slumped in a tattered seat next to the crystal column.

"_You could bring it back_," the TARDIS whispered. "_The sane world. The world that never got broken_."

"No," the Doctor sighed. "I can't."

"_You've never tried. Never. The Daleks did. They always try. But not you. Why not you_?"

"Okay, and _that's_ not the TARDIS speaking!" the Doctor glared at the column. "She's funny sometimes, but she's not crazy. It's not her. Am I talking to myself? Must be. But why? No, wait, delete it. I am completely bonkers, there's no _why_ here. Fine. Fine. Nothing a good night sleep wouldn't cure. Find a comfy bed, tuck myself in, rest my eyes, sleep tight and don't let bedbugs bite."

"_I could take you back there_," the ship whispered, "_to the point where the scales were tipped. You could un-tip them. It's so easy_."

"No, it's not." The Doctor jumped to his feet and ran out of the steering room. In the corridor already, he continued, almost yelling. "Some things are fixed, some moments can't be touched! You know it! _You know it_! _YOU KNOW IT_!"

"_No one's gonna blame you. There's no one else, but you_."

The Doctor reached a vast, spiral staircase, a seemingly endless serpentine of moulded steps and organic-looking banisters. He started running down, taking three – four steps at one jump. He tore off his coat and dropped it into the central shaft, where it whirled down like an enormous autumn leaf.

"_You can arrange it so even you won't remember_," the TARDIS's voice tempted. "_No memory, no remorse, no guilt, no stains on your conscience._"

"Stop it! Stop it! Just, stop it!"

"_Isn't it what you're living for? Because if not... then why do you live? What is your purpose_?"

"Oh, shut it!"

"_I might as well. Seeing how close you are to the Cloister Room anyway_."

The Doctor tried to stop dead, but the momentum carried him down. As a result, he tripped, and saved himself from a deadly fall, by gripping the railing of the stairs. For a few seconds he was hanging dangerously over the staircase's vast recesses, then he pushed himself back, and slumped on the stair, shaking all over.

"Right, that..." he wheezed, "that's even worse than bad. I'm dangerous. I'm just... I can't be here! I can't be in the TARDIS! I can't be allowed anywhere near her!"

He got up shakily and started climbing back. He bit his lips and screwed his eyes against the constant monologue of what sounded like his telepathic ship, but must have been his own mind, projected onto the TARDIS's thought-stream. He ripped off the tie and unbuttoned his suit, revealing layers of t-shirts and vests he had worn against the Ood-Sphere's cold. Murmuring something unrecognisable, he was emptying his pockets as he hurried through the corridors. The stethoscope landed on the floor, followed by two torn tickets to the Wembley Arena and a three-foot long, crumpled receipt from Tesco's. He left his tie hanging on a protruding element of the wall. The wind-up mouse rolled away; its tail whirring. Several glass balls pitter-pattered on the metal mesh floor in the control room. Then there was a plastic torch. Zeus plugs. Three tea-bags and a handful of sugar cubes (rather disgusting, with all the lint and threads stuck to them). A worn book (Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita"). A large, plastic, purple ring. A dried up conker. Some unrecognisable rubbish; just scraps, bits and motes.

Then, finally, he was at the control panel, looking down with his eyes wide, not quite remembering what he was supposed to do. It seemed as if he deconstructed himself, unravelled completely. Even though still wearing mismatched layers of clothing, he seemed naked and fragile. With a deep sigh, he rested his hands on the controls, his long fingers caressing levers and switches.

"Be quiet now," he whispered. "Shush, shush, shush, be quiet."

He rolled a wheel imbedded in the panel, quickly swirled a handle, and pumped a few times at another worn utensil. There was a change in the engines melody. It was louder, but the whooshing become steadier, healthier.

"There," the Doctor said, peering at the screen. "It'll be fine there. Not much to break. Not much indeed."

With one final push he set his ship in motion. There was no usual flourish in his gestures, and as he pushed away from the controls, to sit down on the battered chair, he was just pale and tired.

"Just don't talk anymore," he murmured. "No... Just... Don't."

* * *

**To be continued...**


	6. Weevils and Sparks

_Kill your speed, not your heroes! You hear me?_

* * *

**.6. Weevils and Sparks**

* * *

"What?" Mickey said incredulously. He shrugged uncomfortably in Jack's bear-like hug. "What did you say? Oi! Boss! _Geroff me_!" He weaselled out of Jack's arms, just to fall into Gwen's tight embrace.

"We thought you were dead. We thought you've burnt to a cinder! Bloody hell, Mickey, we thought you were a goner!"

"Well, apparently, I'm _not_," said Mickey putting on airs. "What didya think _that_ for, anyway?"

"What...?" Gwen pulled back, still holding Mickey's shoulders in a strong grip, as if afraid that a gust of wind from the Cardiff Bay could grab him and carry him away. "We _saw_ it! _I_ saw it!"

"Where?" He pulled a face.

"On the screen, Mickey, not on the news," Gwen finally let go of him and turned to Martha, who was standing next to workstations, arms crossed on her chest, eyebrows arched questioningly. "I saw that... that creature... using the Manipulator... just like you could use a gas pump. And then it noticed you, and then it shot that ray of light, sort of like an electric arch, and then... Well, that was it, basically. You burnt. You died."

"Not in this life," Mickey grumbled. "Or in this world."

"So, there was nothing going on here?" asked Jack, his voice low and harsh. "Nothing out of ordinary?"

"Just energy fluctuations," Martha answered. "And the dam is leaking really badly, you should see to those boxes you've put aside, Ianto, I think they look a bit soggy."

"No, but..." Gwen gazed at everybody in turn, her eyes wide. "I _saw_ it. Don't you believe me? Jack? Ianto?"

"Well, I, for that matter, can see no reason for you killing me off in your hallucinations." Mickey shrugged again. "I know I wasn't welcome here, but..."

"We believe you, Gwen," Jack said. "Ianto heard it as well."

"But what was that?"

Martha drew a deep breath, tightening her lips, as her eyes met Jack's stare.

"An anomaly," he answered. "Just another flux."

"An anomaly?" Gwen repeated angrily. "What does it even mean: _an anomaly_?"

"It's what a paradox causes," Martha said slowly, her arms still crossed in a defensive gesture. "There are paradoxes in time and space; endless paradoxes. They can rip the world apart. And they cause waves, ripples. What Donna presented earlier – her visions, her precognitions, her memories – those were anomalies. Our little weather quirks. Our funny energy fluctuations. Our wonderful finds. Anomalies, Gwen, echoes of some event in the time-space continuum."

"The Doctor." Ianto stopped fussing over damp cardboard boxes to look at Jack accusingly. "What'd you bet it was him?"

"That's possible," Jack muttered.

"Bloody meddler."

"Now, wait a minute!" Mickey spat furiously, turning to Ianto. "He's no meddler! You don't even know him, do you? So, don't you call him names!"

Jack sighed and walked across the Hub, taking in the desolate walls and ruined mirrors of the water fountain.

"Let's just calm down," Gwen said. "We're all alive and kicking, which is good, right? An anomaly? Fine. I'll take ten of them over what I saw on that bloody screen. Let's just focus on things at hand, shall we? There's a big, bad nest of Weevils down in... Jack?"

"Yes, carry on." With a dismissive wave of his hand, Harkness climbed the stairs to his office.

"Now, that's..." Gwen gasped.

"He seems worried." Martha tilted her head, looking up at Jack's windowless little room.

"We all are," noted Ianto, a bit of dripping wet cardboard in his hand. He kicked the remains of the box, which had fallen apart at an attempt of lifting it from the floor. "It's just we don't have such nice offices, have we? Would somebody, please, give me a hand with that? They may not look like it, but these are _important_ files."

"He seems more worried than ever," Martha corrected.

Mickey snorted and walked over to Ianto, to help him with files and folders scattered on the concrete floor. Gwen nodded towards Martha. They took the stairs down, to the physician's kingdom – the autopsy room, with its yellowish tiles and mismatched equipment. Gwen jumped up gingerly and sat on a metal autopsy table. After a second of hesitation Martha followed suit. Their legs dangled in the air now, and they looked like two little girls sitting on the bridge.

"He's an odd bird, our Jack," Gwen said quietly. "You work with him and you think you know him, but then he just turns and does something, and you're completely lost again. Cause you know nothing about him. He talks, and he laughs, and he pulls best blokes in the club, but he never says a thing about his past. Never. He worked for Torchwood in the nineteenth century, you know?"

"He's from another time, Gwen," Martha whispered back. "He's ok. Big flirt. But ok. It's just... I don't think this place is good for him. Outside Torchwood he's a different man. This place changes him, and not for the better."

"And yet, here you are." Gwen shook her shining mane.

"Yeah. Trying to change things from the inside." Martha smiled. "Again."

"And how do you plan to do that?"

"Just like you did."

Gwen shifted uncomfortably. "I did? What did I do? I was just stubborn, and stupid, and I landed myself in the middle of that mess... and who am I kidding, I wouldn't change it for the world!"

They both laughed.

"It's easier for you, though," said Gwen after a while. "Cause I think the world is a bit kinder, when you're with that Doctor of yours. A little bit more well-mannered. More civilised."

"My parents were tortured." Martha turned away, darkness crossing her face, frost in her eyes. "And I was completely alone, almost invisible, safe, but made to watch others die. His world only looks civilised. Or maybe he tries very hard to make it such. I fancied him, a long time ago. Oh, I was in love with him, completely, head over heels. But then I looked into him, Gwen, and I saw the deepest darkness, and it scared me so much, I walked away. I still love him. But..."

"That's why I married Rhys," Gwen muttered. "Because Jack... he's..."

"Yeah," Martha sighed.

They were silent for another while.

"He's with Ianto anyway," Gwen said finally.

"It's the worst office for romances _ever_!" Martha added and they both burst into laughter. And in that precise moment the Hub went dark. There was no alarm, emergency lights didn't switch on automatically, the massive, circular door didn't roll shut with its ominous clang. It just went dark and silent.

"Wha...?" Martha felt Gwen's fingers closing on her forearm.

"I don't know. Something's wrong."

"Wait." With a clamour of medical equipment Martha started rummaging blindly in metal cupboards. "Yes!"

There was a glimmer of pale light, just strong enough to encircle both women and the small autopsy room.

"A laryngoscope," Martha said, weaving the medical item like a magic wand. Or a sonic screwdriver – Gwen thought. "Mickey? Ianto? Jack?"

"Ow, you have light, _bloody_..." Mickey's voice broke in an exclamation of pain. "What's that?!"

"Just a table," Ianto's voice explained. "There should be a torch somewhere."

"Yeah, _not quite seeing_ as how we are in _Torchwood_..." Mickey chided.

"Very funny. What happened?"

A strong beam of light pinned them down. They all squinted, words of protest combining in an excited hum. Jack directed the beam at the Rift Manipulator.

"It's dead," he said.

"Yeah, but why?"

"I don't know why, Mickey."

"Yeah, but you've expected it?"

"Why?"

"You've got the torch."

"What about the torch? I always have a torch. Just like Ianto always has a stopwatch." There was anxiety in Jack's voice. He walked down the stairs carefully, just as Gwen and Martha emerged from the autopsy room.

"Did anybody touch anything?" Gwen asked.

"Such as?" Mickey snorted.

"Such as anything that could cut the power off..."

Jack stopped dead at the bottom of the stairs. "Power," he whispered.

And then he was running, his coat fluttering behind him, his heavy boots banging on the floor, the beam of torchlight jumping madly on the walls. Martha made a move to follow him, but Gwen tightened her grip on her forearm.

"No," she said. "The armoury first. There's no power and the locks are electric. The cells will be open. And there are Weevils here."

"Shit!" Ianto rushed towards the armoury. "That's just lovely!"

"No, but..." Martha twisted her hand free from Gwen's grip. "Don't you get it? No power! Donna's sarcophagus! There's no power to the stasis chamber, and there's no backup power as well. She's dying there. Just as we are having a laugh, she's dying!"

"There's a generator," Ianto said quickly. "We've put it there a week ago. Just an ordinary, diesel generator. It should kick in the moment it all went kaput. Jack's on it, don't worry."

"But..."

There was light and at first they thought it was Jack coming back with his powerful torch. But the beam of light, coming from the side corridor, wasn't quite normal. It twisted and wriggled like no ordinary shaft of light ever could. It was a living spiral of blue energy, and many others followed it in a second, crawling into the central room, casting glimmering reflections in the shards of mirrors and in the puddles of water. Gwen gasped, petrified. Martha halted, holding her tiny laryngoscope candle against the writhing and pulsating storm of brightness. They had to screw their eyes to see.

And there they were; walking with a gait, hunched a little, dirty and dark. Weevils. They rushed into the room, their clawed hands dangling at the level of their knees, black eyes glimmering in electric blueness of the light. They growled and bared their fangs.

Ianto's never-used-before Glock clicked when reloaded. The man's hands shook badly. He tried to point the gun at the Weevils, but they were all close, and they were all moving fast, encircling them. The light increased to an unbearable level. There was a sound accompanying it, not unpleasant, but way too intense. The Weevils cowered, bowed, went down to their knees, as a bright entity entered the room. It was made of light, or so it seemed – a beautiful, yet dangerous, lightning sort of blaze. Swirly beams spread in front, behind and over it, like multiple wings, and Gwen first impression now seemed understandable. The creature looked like an angel – but not like a caring, protecting angel that may watch over somebody's sleep. It was a wild God's beast in all its glory – one that burns you as you watch it in awe.

They all stepped back, petrified. The creature's blank and eyeless face turned towards them. It seemed to look at them for a while – long enough to make them freeze. Then it turned towards the Rift Manipulator.

"Shit!" Gwen whispered. "Oh, shit! It's happening!"

An arch of lightning shot towards the Manipulator. Within a second the machine, along with the whole water sculpture, started glowing bright blue. There was a discordant sound and the walls shook. The Weevils sang harshly; or maybe they just howled in fear. Ianto's Glock clattered on the floor as the man pressed his hands to his ears. Gwen screamed. Mickey went to his knees. Martha was backing away, step by step, certain she would faint at any moment.

A rift opened. It wasn't huge; just about seven feet high and pretty narrow. It looked like _aurora borealis_, tipped vertically, all emerald, and purple and ice-cold blue. The remaining mirrors blazed with its light and trembled with its sound. The earth shook.

The Weevils crawled towards the rift. They seemed to be enchanted, or maybe hypnotised by it – paralysed with fear as she was, Gwen thought nonetheless, that it must have been the reason they arrived in Cardiff in the first place – they just spotted the rift and they couldn't resist its call. Now they were diving into the tear in reality, one by one, until the rift swallowed the last of them.

The creature looked back at them again. Its swirling light rays retracted a little, and its shape was almost recognisable – it seemed human enough – just a slim man, surrounded by intense glow. It was watching them.

"No, Mickey, no!"

Gwen started at Jack's roar, and looked at Mickey, getting up from the floor, Ianto's Glock in his hands. She wanted to shout her warning as well, but her throat was tight and dry, and it was much too late anyway. Mickey lifted the gun. An arch of lightning shot from the creature. All become incandescent white.

And then dark.

And then red with a glow of emergency lights.

The rift and the creature were gone. Jack's corpse lay smouldering on the concrete floor. Mickey stood over him for a while, shock twisting his face in a terrible mask. Then he slumped on the floor with a sob.

"Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my..."

"Congratulations, Mickey," Ianto said, his voice faltering. "You've just killed the boss."

"Don't worry, though," Gwen added. "We've all did at some point."

"Oh my God!"

"You're incredible," Martha gasped. "You lot, you're just mad!"

"Oh my God!"

Jack jerked and sat up, his face blackened with soot. He blinked wildly.

"Is it gone?" he croaked.

"In a flash," Ianto said.

"What was it though?" Gwen inquired.

"It came for the Weevils," said Ianto quietly. "The King of the Weevils, maybe?"

In silence, they looked questioningly at each other.

"It was weird," Martha said. "Gwen, you had a precognition. Or rather, you've received a pre-transmission. What's weirder, we've been able to change it. We've changed its outcome. Mickey is alive. Well, somebody still had to die, but luckily he's got more lives than a cat." She smiled at Jack. "What about Donna?"

"She'll be all right," he said curtly. "It was a touch and go, but everything's within normal parameters now."

"That's good. I'm cooking for Wilfred tonight; if anything happened to Donna, I rather think that it would put a cramp in our date."

"Will it be back?" Ianto asked.

"There's a lot more Weevils to collect this side of the rift, and somebody's found a way to catch a ride on its currents." Jack nodded heavily. "So, I guess you have your answer. The King of the Weevils will be back."

"Oh my God!" Mickey said.

* * *

**To be continued...**


	7. All Things Lost

_This story is taking me to unusual places. I just follow._

**_Disclaimer:_**_ Sorry, terribly sorry, I just had to. Don't sue me, Masters of the Whoniverse._

* * *

**.7. All Things Lost**

* * *

The beach seemed to stretch forever, fading finally in a haze of a distance. The ground was coarse and the sea was dark blue. It had yet time to polish the rocks and to grind pebbles into fine, white powder. Instead of palms, which would probably look quite natural here, huge fern trees lined the shoreline. The sky was incredibly clear.

The Doctor inhaled deeply, shoved his coat's tails aside and pushed his hands deep into the trousers' pockets. He looked down, at his converses, sinking slowly in wet gravel. Small waves foamed and swirled at his feet. There were trilobites and ammonites crawling among the rough pebbles.

"Not much to interfere with, indeed," the Doctor said. "All completely new, freshly unwrapped. It's hard to imagine that this world is already billions years old, isn't it?"

The TARDIS was silent. She waited patiently, without her usual excited hum; not quite audible on the outside, unless you knew what to listen to. It seemed she was holding her breath.

The Doctor strode up the shoreline, to where rocks sheltered a shallow cave, full of finer pebbles and dried up algae. He sat down, crossing his legs, elbows on his knees, fingers interlaced in front of him.

"So old, yet so young," he said.

"Just like you," said Donna. She straightened her purple tunic on her hips, lifted the legs of her trousers, and sat down next to him. She brushed her hair away from her shoulders. "All these times I asked you to take me to the beach," she sighed. "It seems I had to die to finally get here."

"You're not dead," the Doctor murmured.

"No, I'm like that cat in the box, you know; the Schrödinger's cat? Dead and alive at the same time? Or maybe in two different worlds, as Hugh insisted – and I'll be dead in one world and alive in the other as soon as your decision is made?"

The Doctor looked at her furrowing his brow.

"Nice," he grumbled. "Quantum mechanics. Schrödinger and Everett. Give me a bit of Einstein, Rosen and Podolsky as well, why don't you? Or maybe some Grishnnkh's volumetric stream equations. Cause they're never boring."

"I just want you to make up your mind, you plum!" she snorted and kicked the sand with the tip of her flip-flop.

"Donna, I..."

There was somebody's voice ringing in his ear.

"Hey, mister, wake up! Wake up! Mister?"

The Doctor woke up with a start and looked up, blinking in bright sunlight.

"Huh? What?"

There was a stranger's face hovering above him – young, narrow, freckled and topped with a mop of bright ginger hair.

"You were sleeping on my doorstep, mister," the stranger said.

"Was I? Really? Your doorstep? What was I doing it for?"

"Well, you tell me," the man laughed, straightening his back. "I honestly don't know. Would you mind moving, though, I'd like to get inside."

"Inside?" The Doctor looked back, at a crooked door, then again at the man, waiting patiently for him to shift. "Right. Sorry. Never happened to me before. I thought... I thought I was someplace else. Some _time_ else. Mid Devonian, from the look of it."

He got up slowly, staring up and down the narrow, cobbled street.

"Say, you haven't seen a blue box, by any chance?" he asked hesitantly. "A big, blue box, a police box?"

"A police box?" The man wrinkled his brow. "I don't know what you mean."

The Doctor chewed on his lower lip, now taking in the man's clothing. It was very plain and stained. The man wore a grey, cloth trousers with suspenders, worn leather shoes, and a short jacket. The trousers were slightly too short, and the jacket too big. The man had a peaked cap, perched on top of his ginger mop.

"I'm the Doctor," the Doctor said. "Sorry. I must have been very tired."

"Tim," the man said. "Timothy O'Leary."

"Nice to meet you, Timothy O'Leary... Oh... Timothy O'Leary! You're Timothy O'Leary!"

"Yes," Tim moved a step back. "So?"

"No, nothing, no," the Doctor stuttered quickly. "It's just... Nice to meet you, Timothy O'Leary, _so_ very nice to meet you!"

"Do I know you?" the man asked.

"No. _Nooo_. Not at all. No." The Doctor gave him his broadest and most loony smile. The man smiled back, hesitantly, and gestured towards the door of the old, crooked house. The Doctor stepped aside, still grinning, letting him pass. The door opened and a little girl jumped outside, her flaming hair flying behind her.

"Daddy!"

"Well, hello, Penny!" Tim shouted, reaching out to catch her in his arms. He lifted her high in the air. "My sweet Penny!"

"Did you bring me something?" she asked, kissing him on a cheek, her arms wrapped around his neck. "Did you bring me something, daddy?"

The man's smile faltered a little.

"Not today, Penny," he said. "Sorry."

The girl pouted a little. The Doctor started suddenly, and pushed his hand into his coat's pocket, his long fingers searching.

"Erm... Tim?" he whispered, and behind the girl's back he handed the man a bright red ribbon. Timothy looked at it, his brow furrowed. The Doctor clucked his tongue and winked at him. Timothy hesitated, but picked the ribbon from the Doctor's open hand.

"Right," he cleared his throat. "Actually... there's a little something..."

He sat the girl on top of a stony wall and handed her the ribbon. Penny shrieked with joy. Taking the opportunity, the Doctor produced his sonic screwdriver and pointed it at the girl and her father, hiding the blue glow in his cusped hand. He checked the sonic's readings with his brow wrinkled in deep concentration. The device trilled and hummed.

"It is lovely, daddy! Oh, it is gorgeous!" the girl shouted.

Timothy turned his face towards the Doctor and mouthed a happy "Thanks."

The Doctor nodded with a smile and pocketed the sonic. He looked up and down the street again, taking in the rows of small, cheap houses, which would be pretty grim if the weather was bad, but in full sunlight seemed pretty hospitable and nice.

"Eeerm... Could you tell me... cause I'm such a scatterbrain... Where exactly... umm... are we?" the Doctor asked.

"Are you lost, mister?" Timothy said, his sing song Irish accent more prominent than ever. "It's Orchard Street."

"Orchard Street, right!" the Doctor turned away, then faced Tim again. "Eeerm... what town?"

"Why, it's Dublin, where else could you be, mister?"

"Where else, indeed," the Doctor smiled. "I'll be on my way, then. And... sorry for sleeping on your doorstep. I don't know what got into me. Must've been knackered."

He made a move to walk away, but Timothy called after him: "Wait, Doctor."

"Hmm?"

"Step inside," the man said. "My wife's cooked some stew."

"Ohh," the Doctor rolled his eyes, "I couldn't possibly..."

"Well, you're lost and tired, ain't you? We'll feed you and then I'll help you looking for that blue box of yours," Timothy said. "You run inside, Polly, tell mum we have a guest."

The girl disappeared inside the house, giggling, the red ribbon held tightly in her fist.

"Mummy!" she shouted. "Mummy! Look what daddy got me! A ribbon! And a red one. And it's gorgeous! Much better than the one this silly, ugly, naughty Tom Noble stole from me!"

"After you," Timothy O'Leary said, gesturing towards the door. The Doctor looked around again, inhaling deeply through his narrow nose, and then letting out a long breath. He hesitated for a second, and then made a step towards O'Leary's house.

* * *

**To be continued...**


	8. Everyone but You

_Yeah, I know. (Bashing myself on the head with blunt objects.) That's NOT a Torchwood story! But it sort of SLIPPED out and now I can't ignore it. Blimey! To be quite honest, if I were filming it, I'd probably cut it out and saved it for the DVD boxset edition =D. But since I'm not filming it, here it goes..._

_**Disclaimer:** You've made it mine so don't act surprised ;D._

* * *

**.8. Everyone but You**

* * *

Gwen was staring down, at her hands clasped together on top of a long, polished table. She hardly listened to Jack and Martha, speaking in turns; and to Ianto and Mickey, providing much needed, but slightly irritating comical interludes. Her fingers were twitching; something inside her was twitching as well, and she would have mistaken it for Junior moving in her belly if the feeling was nice. But it wasn't. It was gnawing, and twisting, and anxious kind of twitching, and she was sick of it.

Jack apparently finished the meeting, and was gathering files Ianto had spread before him on the table. Mickey jumped from his chair, clearly relieved and ready to go. Gwen cleared her throat, her heart pounding in her chest.

"Wait a moment, Jack," she said quickly. "Just one more thing."

Harkness looked up at her, his blue eyes narrowed. She knew he knew what she was going to say. It didn't make it any easier. She cleared her throat again.

"Now, what about that angel-creature? Is anybody going to ask the obvious question?" She looked around at the rest of the team. "Was it..." she stuttered. "Was it _him_?"

Ianto looked down, biting his lips. Jack clenched his jaws. Martha's eyes were moving from one face to the other, her breath withheld.

"Do you mean...?" she started.

"No," Jack said harshly. "It can't be him. He's gone. He's..."

"We're talking about a man, who cannot... cannot... well, not _die_... Who cannot _cease to exist_," Gwen said.

"It's not him," Jack repeated.

"Are you saying that, because it was you who have made him _undead_ in a first place?" Gwen spat angrily. "Cause that's just denial."

"It wasn't Owen!" Jack shouted. His chair tipped backwards and rammed on the floor as he sprang up. "So, stop it now! Owen's gone!"

"Jack. Jack. _Jack!_" Gwen was shouting as well now. "Running away won't help. _Jack_?!"

Harkness didn't stop. He rushed towards the exit without even a look back. He slammed the door behind him. The rest of the team was silent.

"What?!" Gwen yelled, looking at Ianto. "What now?! Somebody had to say it! For God's sake, you named it the King of the Weevils yourself!"

"I just..." Ianto swallowed hard. "Seemed a good idea at the time. To clear the atmosphere. I didn't really _mean_ it."

"Well, you _said_ it," Gwen snorted. "And it certainly _didn't_ clear the atmosphere."

"He's right, though." Ianto got up quickly and started backing towards the door as well. "Owen's gone."

Gwen slammed her hands against the table. She bit her lips looking at them, leaving the room one by one, regretting Rhys hadn't been there for the meeting. He'd back her up, she was sure of it.

"Or maybe it's common sense."

She looked up, at Martha standing next to her chair, arms crossed on its high backrest.

"What?"

"Maybe it's not denial, but common sense," Martha repeated.

"What's so sensible about not considering all of the possibilities?" Gwen asked. "Isn't it what we're supposed to be doing here? Isn't it what Torchwood is for?"

Martha sighed and sat down again. She was moving the folders Jack had left on the table.

"And if it is him?" she asked finally. "What then?"

"Don't look at me," Gwen shrugged. "I have no idea. See, Owen... he used to be a little unbalanced at best of times, and in his death... He... Well, just put yourself in his shoes..."

Martha shook her head. "I don't think I can. I mean, he was _dead_. He was dead and walking, and he couldn't sleep, or eat..."

"Or shag," Gwen added under her breath.

"Or heal," Martha finished a bit louder. "And then, he gets locked in a nuclear plant, flooded with radioactive coolant; no way to reach him, no way to communicate with him, no way to know if he... If he... I don't know... Dissolved, maybe?"

"I guess we all assumed he was gone," Gwen whispered. "The moment the room flooded... just gone. But now I'm starting to think that maybe he was still there, conscious, watching his body in that water, getting more and more soggy, and falling apart, and..." she gagged with sudden tears. "Can you imagine anything like that? _Can_ you?"

Martha shifted uneasily, a sorrowful frown on her face.

"So if it is Owen," she said slowly, "if by some anomalous coincidence he managed to escape that room... if the rift opened there somehow and sucked him through... there's still no chance to communicate with him... safely."

"He tried to kill Mickey," Gwen mused. "But then, he doesn't know Mickey."

"He did burn Jack," Martha pointed out.

"He has no reason to love Jack either. He shot him once."

"He's very angry," Martha noted.

"He's always had a soft spot for you," said Gwen.

"What?"

"He liked you, Martha. He thought you were gorgeous and smart, smarter and prettier than him, and that says something. He fancied you."

Martha's eyes widened.

"You want me to communicate with Owen?"

"You're my weapon of choice, Doctor Jones."

For a moment they were both silent.

"How are we going to do it?" Martha asked after a while.

Gwen shifted, surprised. "I thought you'd need more convincing."

"Why would I need that?" Martha gave her a slight smile. "If he's Owen, then he's one of us. Maybe he is the King of the Weevils, but maybe he needs help. In the least he deserves an apology. He's one of us and we've left him. I know that there was nothing we could do, and I know he knew it as well, but still... He deserves to hear that 'we're sorry'. And we could get to know how he transformed into an angel."

Gwen shrugged. "That wasn't an angel. I was wrong."

"No. Of course," Martha said quietly.

"_Was_ it?"

"No, Gwen, it wasn't an angel. Or it wasn't Owen. You can't have both at the same time, right?"

Gwen managed to smile. It was a weak smile, but the twitching inside her body subsided a little.

"I thought about going back to that house," she said. "I know it sounds crazy, but we know Weevils are there, and if he's coming back, he'll be back for them. Now, it is dangerous, and I wanted everybody to back me up, but... It seems they don't give a damn. Bloody Torchwood! They just gave up, all of them... Everybody..."

"Everybody but you," Martha said. "We'll need to gear up."

"I wish we knew how to shoot that Dalek's guns we have in the armoury," Gwen sighed. "Bloody effective."

"Guns," Martha hesitated. "I didn't mean..."

The doors burst opened; both wings at once. Jack was standing there, his face full of anger. His gaze moved from one woman to the other. They looked back at him, stubbornly, not giving in to intimidation.

"Just to be clear – Donna's my priority," Jack said curtly. "And I don't believe it was Owen. But none of you is going to that house on your own. And, choose a room without security cameras next time you plan your little _coup d'état_, will you?"

"Thank you, Jack," Martha said to his shoulders as he swivelled in the spot to walk away. Harkness paused and looked back at her.

"This creature is just another thing that slid through the Rift, and it's up to us to collect them and utilize them," he said. "Sorry if I don't get sentimental on the job."

"Oh, _don't you_ now?" Gwen murmured. Her and Jack's eyes met for a moment, at first angry, then with dawning understanding. He nodded briefly.

"I'll be running," Martha said quickly, gathering her stuff and pushing it to the large handbag. "I'm meeting Wilf tonight; see you later, yeah?" She swung the handbag on her shoulder. "Is ten p.m. all right?"

"Yeah," Jack was still looking at Gwen. "Oh, Martha? Bring the Cornucopia back, will you? I presume you remember what I said about taking the alien technology out of the base?"

Martha bit her lips and smiled sheepishly. "Sorry."

"Ten sharp, Martha. And give Wilfred my regards."

* * *

**To be continued...**

* * *


	9. One of Many Mondays

_Short one. And a bit loony;)_

* * *

**.9. One of Many Mondays**

* * *

The Doctor swaggered off, hands in his pockets, whistling quietly and turning his face towards the pale, August sky. He opened the TARDIS's door with a snap of his fingers and walked inside, still with much gusto, tails of his coat billowing behind him. He snapped again and the door closed.

"Lovely people, the O'Learys," he said. "You should have tried their stew, Donna. Delicious. Funny how some things _don't_ run in the family."

He took off his coat, and threw it to the floor.

"The girl, Penny, she's positive," he continued, taking off the jacket and rolling up shirt's sleeves. "It's all hidden, just ticking underneath the surface, invisible and unrecognisable, and completely benign. But I've sonicked her and it is there. That little splinter of the Snow Queen's mirror. In her blood. In every cell of her body. In her very DNA."

He grabbed the screen and turned it towards him. The screen blinked, some random Gallifreyan numbers popping up and disappearing in a haze of white noise. The Doctor knocked his knuckles on the screen.

"_Come ON_!" he shouted. "Just one last trip, please, my old girl! Huh? _Pretty_ please?"

There was painful dissonance in the TARDIS's response. Her engines were wheezing breathlessly. Even the light was different, not so much amber, as greenish; a sickly, pale colour, turning the Doctor's face into the one of a terminally ill patient. He didn't seem to notice it, though, completely preoccupied with controls. He pushed a lever and grabbed the mallet from under the panel to slam it on the control desk.

The TARDIS's rota trembled, whooshed up, hesitated, and then slammed back again. And up and down it went, picking up some sort of a rhythm – a quick, and angry, and terrified rhythm of escape. The light turned red and a Cloister Bell rang once, from within the ship's depths.

"Ha!" the Doctor yelled, running around the column and flipping switches on his way. "Who's panicking now? Ha? _Ha_?!"

The TARDIS shook and took off, vanishing from the sunny Irish street, from one of many Mondays, in one of many years in the past, just to dive into a vortex, picking up speed as she slid through an improbable tunnel in space and time. The impact of her take-off threw the Doctor well across the steering room. He moaned a little, getting up from the floor and rubbing his elbows.

"No need to get excited," he growled. "And I'm fine, thank you. All the better for your trashing me around. You've proven your point. You hear me? You're right. It's done."

He sprang to his feet gingerly. "So, let's go and do it."

The Cloister Bell rang again as little showers of steam and sparks exploded from the walls, hissing angrily. The Doctor ran through them, absolutely unaware of their presence, towards the dashboard, and started shifting levers. He grabbed a date selector, but hesitated.

"No, wait," he whispered. "Where was I? I wanted to rest. No! I went there, and it was Monday. And now it's all shifting. All around me, shifting, changing. I have to do it... I've done it. She said I had to do it, cause it had been done already. But what if it was another flux, another anomaly? How am I supposed to know?"

"Stop worrying," Donna said. The Doctor started and turned towards her, one hand still on the selector. "You're worrying too much."

"Am I?" He lifted one eyebrow. "I am as mad as a hatter, a hatter in batter, a battered hatter, so, of course I worry. See, now, I've just tried to set the course, but I couldn't. There's no course. It's all a labyrinth now. There are just walls, and walls, and walls, and walls, and walls..."

He doubled in pain. The ship trembled and jerked as a loud explosion tore the steering room's floor in half. The rota was whooshing up and down stubbornly, and the TARDIS's engines were howling. The Cloister Bell rang again, and the Doctor noticed it finally. He cowered in shock, his eyes almost popping out of their sockets.

"No!" he yelled. "_Noooo_! It can't be happening, no!"

He had to hold on to the steering panel for his dear life now, as the ship was shaking and rocking violently. Half lying on the dashboard, he grabbed the screen again and typed something on a keyboard underneath. The screen blinked orange and died. The Doctor pushed it away, stepped back from the steering panel, running his fingers through his untidy hair. His face was twisted in disbelief.

"All is wrong," he whispered. "All is wrong! There's nothing but anomalies. They are pulling us apart, but _where are we_?!"

"Outside the world," Donna proposed. "In the junkyard of possibilities."

"Yeah, lovely, but _what does it mean_?!"

He rushed towards the door and jerked it open. His face elongated as he looked out. The space was on the blink, constantly shifting, pulsating with light and darkness; shapes appearing in place of nothingness, just to be washed away into invisibility a moment later.

"It can't be..." the Doctor whispered.

"Well," Donna crossed her hands on her chest, taking a peek from behind his shoulder. "You're quite right. None of it can be, so these worlds cease to exist as you look at them. They are born and they die in an instant. Nothing is stable. Nothing is fixed."

"But that's... terrible!" the Doctor gasped.

"Oh, I don't know," Donna shrugged. "There were times when you wanted it to be just the way it is now – so... _transient_. No rules, no fixed points, no responsibilities, no... _life_..."

"No, but..." the Doctor whispered, his knuckles white on the doorframe, "there is life... there's Alfric, there's Eve, there's Penny... I saw them... I saw them all... and they were alive, they were fine, they were _just fine_!"

"So sweet, the way you've checked on them all, just to make sure that Donna Noble's bloodline is safe after what you did," she chided.

"I did? What did I do?" He faced her, pale and shocked. "When did I do it?"

"Don't you remember? A clearing in the forest. A man walking back to his hut. His young wife, very tired and very pregnant. Just a right spot in time; a place where the scales could be un-tipped. They sat by your fire and you offered them a drink. They drank as you watched. They thanked you and they left. Such a minuscule event, such an ordinary day. It was Monday, by the way. One of many Mondays."

"I... I can't... I can't remember..." The Doctor screwed his eyes trying to bring back the memory of the event. Unseen by him, worlds were exploding into existence, folding into themselves, twisting, imploding, fading, dissolving. Shapes and colours flowered and withered. Stars were rising and falling down.

The Doctor groaned and slammed the door shut. "I can't remember at all!"

"No wonder," Donna said. "Your mind has been tampered with. Lovely little Cells, hungry little Cells, devouring the remains of your reason. My poor Doctor, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, but just when you tried to escape the TARDIS and find some rest, you were taken to the exactly right point in time-space continuum. Hence now it is not so _continuous_ anymore. You have shattered it. Happy? _Happy-happy_?"

"_NO_!" The Doctor dashed back to the control panel and clutched on levers as is they were a lifeline. "_NO, NO, NO, NO, NO_! Stop it, Donna, you're _wrong_! I didn't destroy the world, I couldn't! How could I? There must be a way... a way out of here... Cause... It is just a place where paradoxes die, isn't it? Yes, that's what it is! A scrap-heap of paradoxes! And I have to find my way out of here!"

"That'll be tough, what with you being the greatest paradox of them all," Donna said, but she gave him a warm smile at the same time. She watched him, working frantically on the ship's controls. Suddenly she reached out and placed her cusped hand on his cheek. She stroked it gently. "Sorry, sorry. My poor, silly Martian. Your poor, silly brain. It can take a lot, can't it? But it was a bit much, even for you. Still, you'll be all right, Doctor. You'll be just fine. It'll all fall into place, just you wait. Just you wait, my boy."

He looked at her, tears rising in his brown eyes.

"_WHO ARE YOU_?" he whispered intently.

She smiled again.

"I am what's holding you together, Doctor," she answered. "Now, try to recalibrate matrix boosters. There's a screeching sound to them, can't you hear it? Nasty little bugger. And if you'd just pumped the circular stream relocator up a notch... Just like that. And switch off that interference loop shunt, it gets on my nerves... There's lovely. You know you could fix that chameleon circuit? Oh, no, sorry, I forgot, you like it the way it is."

"You're _me_," the Doctor gasped. "You've been me all the time. You're the sane part of me. Donna, you _are_ what's holding me together! My wonderful, my _brilliant_ Donna Noble!"

He grinned at her, tears still shimmering on his eyelashes. The TARDIS was groaning and screaming as she was falling through the paradoxes-riddled universe.

* * *

**To be continued...

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**


	10. All the Stars are Falling Down

_For some reason it was a very difficult chapter to write. It is a little... I don't know...=). Please, review, and tell me what you think._

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**.10. All the Stars are Falling Down**

* * *

The derelict building was quiet as they entered the ground floor. There was a vast lobby there, with beautiful, twisting stairs leading to upper levels. There was no furniture, but piles of rubbish and rags cluttered the floor, and several decomposing mattresses lay by the walls. It stank of damp, and dust and urine. The night was moonless, and the house was dark.

Martha shrugged, closing her fingers on the handle of a heavy torch. In the other hand she clutched the anti-weevil spray, her index finger posed over the nozzle. She looked back at Gwen who was holding a much smaller torch alongside a gun, so that the beam of light pointed exactly where the gun's barrel was directed. Very professional, Martha thought.

"We are mad," Mickey's voice whispered in her earphone.

"Shut up, Mickey," whispered Jack's voice.

"No, but... They're nocturnal, right? So what on Earth are we doing here, middle of the night? We should come here at noon. And bring along an army."

"Mickey, just shut it!"

"He's got a point, though" Ianto's voice chipped in.

"But where _are_ they?" Martha asked. "You said the house was swarming with them."

"Maybe they've gone already."

"Now, everybody, just keep quiet!" Jack actually stomped his foot on rotten floor-boards. "Ianto, are you picking any movement?"

Ianto lifted up a motion detector and turned slowly around, the machine bleeping quietly and steadily.

"This is _sooo_ 'Aliens'," Mickey sighed in awe. "This is _sooo_ no good," he added on second thought.

"Nothing," Ianto said. "There's nothing. Switching to infra-red now, and... Still nothing. Just us."

"Okay, let's spread up," Jack ordered. "Ianto and Mickey – second floor. Gwen and Martha – first floor. I'll take the basement."

There were rags and piles of rubbish on the first floor as well. The odour was almost unbearable; it smelled like a cage of a wild beast. Or worse. Martha wrinkled her nose. Rooms were enormous, with rows of high windows letting in some starlight. Wallpapers were peeling from damp walls, and floorboards squeaked ominously underfoot. And there was no living creature there.

"They're really gone," Martha said, half disappointed and half happy with the fact. "We're too late."

"I hope they went back home," Gwen whispered, "that they are not lost anymore. It must be so awful to get lost like that..." her voice trailed off.

"Let's go back to the others." Martha sighed and turned to the door. Gwen lowered her gun. She stood there for a while, her long hair curtaining her face.

"Owen!" she shouted suddenly. "Owen! We're here, Owen! We've came!"

Martha gasped and turned back.

"We don't even know..."

"Owen?!"

"Gwen..."

"Owen, please! Please, Owen, show yourself! _Owen_?!"

"What's going on there?" the intercom asked in Jack's voice.

Gwen yelled wordlessly and kicked a pile of rubbish on the floor. And then kicked it some more. Martha watched her quietly.

"Nothing," Gwen said at last. She brushed her hair off her face. "We're done here."

Defeated, they walked slowly downstairs.

And there it was. The angel. It didn't even look human anymore – just an electric blue light, swirling and pulsating in the darkness. There was a hum of energy in the air – like the one you might hear when standing near a powerful relay station – buzzing, and crackling, and discouraging you from getting too close. Martha halted on the stairs and grabbed Gwen's arm, just to make sure she wouldn't do anything stupid. Ianto and Mickey nearly collided with them in their hurry. Jack emerged from the corridor leading to the basement. Beams of light crisscrossed, but the electric glow swallowed them all. Martha saw the light of her powerful torch dimming, then dying out completely. It seemed that the creature was able to drain the energy from almost anything. Mrtha felt her heart pounding. Hesitantly, she made a step forward. She saw Jack raising his hand in warning, and felt a shudder of Gwen's arm. She swallowed loudly.

"Who are you?" she said, her voice faltering a little. "Can you tell us, who you are?"

The hum of energy intensified and the blue light expanded a notch. There were white hot strings in it now, writhing threateningly.

"Please," Martha continued. "We mean you no harm. Is there a way we can communicate? Can you talk to us? That's all we want. Just talk."

Jack sent her an approving glance, his hand still up in a warning gesture.

The creature turned. A moment ago it had no distinctive shape, now Martha could see a human form hidden in a bright cocoon. She could even tell the creature's face, even though there were still no features to talk about present; just an oval shape above the angel's shoulders. Still, she had an impression that she was being watched intently. She drew a deep breath, and stepped down, onto the ground level's floor. Jack hissed involuntarily. Martha didn't want to risk a look back at Gwen, Mickey and Ianto; she just hoped that the men would stop Gwen from doing anything rash.

Martha steadied herself and drew another deep breath. "What would the Doctor do?" she asked herself. "What would he say?"

"Look," she raised her hands slightly, and then, equally slowly, she bent down and dropped the torch and the spray canister on the floor. "I'm not armed. I just want to talk. That's it. Just talk."

It used to be somewhat easier for the Doctor. He had known just the right words; how to use them to charm his opponents and to draw them into conversation. But the angel-creature was just looking at her, or at least the creature's face was still turned towards her. It wouldn't move, or speak, or signal its willingness to communicate in any other way. Maybe it couldn't understand her. The TARDIS would translate Martha's words whenever she wanted to talk to an alien. But the TARDIS wasn't there. Martha wasn't sure if the ship's influence hadn't dissipated by now. She used her hands to communicate, gesturing widely, but cautiously:

"Can we talk?"

The sound was so sudden and so powerful, they all screamed in pain and cowered with their hands pressed firmly to their ears. It was like a wave and it washed over them, leaving them semiconscious on the floor. The content of Martha's backpack dug painfully in between her shoulder blades. She squinted in brilliantly white blaze. Her earphone whispered in Mickey's voice: "Oh... _my_... _GOD_!"

Martha counted her limbs quickly, still in a haze of shock. She propped herself on her elbows and shrugged off the backpack's straps, leaving it on the floor, as she shakily got to her feet again. She blinked and looked around. Jack was up already, his revolver pointed at the creature. Martha gasped and looked back, at Gwen and Ianto. They reached for their weapons as well – a natural Torchwood's response to a threat.

"No!" Martha shouted, as threads of burningly white light shot off the angel-creature, and towards the three of them. "No, stop!"

Jack lifted his chin, turning his face away from the light which, unlike any other light, halted an inch from his watering, blue eye. Ianto and Gwen froze as well, pinned in spot by two other light threads.

"No!" Martha repeated. "Lower your weapons, just... just put them down."

She made another hesitant step forward, but it was enough for the creature to send another warning light thread, which hovered in front of her face. Much too close for comfort. Her eyes widened.

"No guns," she whispered. "We are not enemies. We are not a threat. You don't have to harm us. Please. You're hurting us."

She didn't look to see if the rest of the team listened to her advice, but they must have, as the creature withdrew its bright tentacles. Its light subsided, and its shape consolidated even more, but it was still almost translucent. Threads of energy retracted into the creature as it shifted slightly and then moved towards Martha. Its movement was fluid; it wasn't walking, but floating in the air. And then its face was only inches from her face. She was standing completely still now, dreading to move a muscle. Brightness burned her pupils, but she didn't dare to blink.

White and blue oval in front of her rippled suddenly, and features emerged; it seemed as if they surfaced from within, forming a shape, like a liquid poured into a mould. Martha could see the face now – a bridge of its nose, hollow circles in place of its eyes, high cheekbones, a suggestion of spiky hair above its forehead. Electric blue eyes opened, moved and focused on Martha's eyes. Thin lips parted and weirdly illuminated teeth appeared as the angel smiled at her.

She sighed involuntarily, her heart breaking.

"Owen?"

It was just looking at her. Maybe it was Owen, or maybe the creature simply took the form of the one person so clear in their minds, of the one person they wanted to see so much.

"Are you Owen?" she whispered again.

The terrifying bluish grin faded. The creature tilted its head, scrutinising Martha in an uncomprehending manner, as if she were as alien to it, as it was to her. Then the creature's eyes moved away and looked at something behind her. She didn't risk following its gaze, and stood completely still as it drifted around her, disappearing from her view. Only then did she turn carefully, holding her breath.

The angel reached for something on the floor. Martha didn't recognise it at first in the weird illumination, but then she knew.

The angel was holding the Cornucopia in its cusped hands. The mood candle Martha was supposed to return to the Hub, but had forgotten about it completely in her hurry to confront the creature. The angel bent its head to look closely at the shell. And it smiled again, turning back to Martha.

The shell began to glow. Red. Red. Bright orange. Impossible yellow. Sun-burning gold. And there was a strange aroma in the air – with a metallic tinge, like licking old coins. But the creature's light subsided slowly. Instead of being painfully bright, it was now blue like clear water. The Cornucopia turned into a beacon of energy, a little supernova, impossible to look upon, while the creature became a pillar of liquid glow, almost soothing for tired eyes. It opened its mouth.

"Ones you name Weevils," it spoke, its voice buzzing like electricity, "They mine. I take them. Not stand in way."

Martha bit her lips for a second. She wasn't sure if her voice wouldn't fail her.

"Are you Owen?" she asked finally.

"There... was... Owen. Owen is me."

"Oh, my God!" Gwen gasped. "But... are you...?"

"Owen is me," the creature repeated.

"But you are not him?" Jack said slowly. He came closer, but not too close. He was holding his empty hands up so that the creature could see them. The angel-creature gave him a slow look. "Owen is you, but you are not Owen, right?"

The creature shuddered. When it spoke again, its voice was almost human.

"Owen is a part of me. Still is. Not gone. But I am not Owen. I am more. I am a light of many."

Gwen sobbed quietly. She shook her head.

"But how? How is it possible? Did he die? Are you his soul? Are you his ghost? Are you an angel?" she almost shouted.

"I don't know what it means," the creature answered. "I found Owen. Owen is me. Owen is safe. All are safe. I am a light of many."

"Do you have a name?" Martha asked.

"Name?" the creature blinked. "Like Owen – name? No. Many Owen – names. No one name."

"How shall we call you, then?" Ianto muttered.

"Still preoccupied with names, I see," the creature said and stopped dead, as if surprised. "Name me," it requested after a while. "Names are good."

"Light," Ianto whispered, his lips trembling. "Is it ok? Light?"

Owen's face smiled at him ghastly.

"Light is good."

"Why are you taking Weevils? _Where_ are you taking them?" Jack asked.

"Home," Light answered. "They are lost. So lost. This... this world is not safe anymore. It cracks and shifts as we speak. Not much time left. The world crumbles. There was an alteration made to its matrix and now it is weakened. The wall is thin and the weird is seeping through. It may not withstand. Not safe. I am sorry."

It half-turned as if ready to go.

"Wait, what do you mean?" Jack asked urgently.

"All the stars are falling down," Light said sadly. "They fall and they die. Sorry, Jack. Sorry, Martha. Sorry, Gwen. Sorry, Ianto. Sorry..."

"Mickey," Mickey whispered.

"Mickey," Light repeated. "Sorry. But it is nearly time."

"Time for what?" Jack insisted.

Light looked up, its glowing face melting, all resemblance to Owen disappearing in an instant.

"Here it comes," it said ominously. "The wave. I pity you. May you continue, all of you. May you withstand the wave. May you survive its afterimages."

"What..."

"Here it comes!" Light brightened, twisted, lost its human shape. "It comes now!"

And it was gone.

"No wait, wait, you can't go now, you can't, Light! Light!? _Light_?!"

Jack rushed forward frantically, but he only grasped the falling Cornucopia. He yelled in pain and dropped it to the floor, where it still gloved a supernova gold for a while, before its shade turned first to deep amber, then to red, and finally to its usual greenish tint.

"Oh, shit!" He looked at his palms, covered in ugly blisters. They were gone in a blink of an eye, though, and he clenched his fists in anger. "Damn it all!"

"So... what did it mean?" Mickey asked quietly. "I didn't... I guess that was a warning... right? And was it Owen or not? Cause..."

"Shut up, Mickey," Martha said.

Gwen walked up to Jack, her body stiff, her lips pursed. She raised her head to look into his face. And then she opened her arms, just as he opened his. They held each other in tight embrace for a moment. After a while Ianto joined them, and Martha followed suit. Mickey only shrugged.

"A group hug now," he sneered. "Lovely. It is _shut up, Mickey_ this, _shut up, Mickey_ that, generally, _shut your gob, Mickey_, cause we just wanna _cuddle_! The _other_ Torchwood wasn't as mad as this one, you know. And they weren't pushing me around all the time. And they wouldn't tell me to keep my mouth shut when I wanted to ask an important question..."

"Shut up, Mickey," said Jack. Gwen was sobbing, with her face buried in his lapel. "Shut up and come 'ere!"

"Yeah, you wish!" Mickey jumped back.

"It _was_ a warning, though," said Ianto. "_May you withstand the wave_, and _here it comes_. It sounded very _warningly_ to me."

They stepped back from the group hug, looking at each other anxiously.

"A warning about what?" Martha asked. "What's the wave?"

"Donna spoke about cracks and rifts as well," Jack said. "She spoke about paradoxes seeping through rifts. It all sounds so familiar."

"The _wave_," Gwen murmured. "It freaks me out."

"It's the _here it comes_ that freaks _me_," said Ianto. "_Here it comes_ as in _now_?"

A dog howled outside. They all shrugged at this sound, so sad and lonely. But it wasn't lonely for long. There were other dog's voices joining in the howl, and even a fox's barking coming from the junkyard of a garden.

"Now, that can't be good," Mickey gasped, just as the floor trembled under his feet. He fell backwards, luckily landing on a damp and stinking mattress. Jack managed to keep Martha from falling; Gwen grabbed the stairs railing, and Ianto fell to his knees with a painful moan. The entire building shook, groaning and creaking. Dust and flakes of paint snowed on their heads. Jack looked up and saw cracks spreading across the ceiling.

"Run!" he yelled, pushing Martha in front of him, and reaching towards Ianto and Gwen. They didn't need to be told twice. Bricks were showering from bulging walls now, and the staircase collapsed with an overwhelming noise. The cloud of dust surrounded them in an instant. They were running blindly, tripping over unidentified objects, the ground moving under their feet. Somehow they all managed to find the exit, and they tumbled down the stairs onto the wild lawn in front of the house.

A moment later there was no house to talk about; just a huge pile of debris. And still the earth was shaking and rocking, and thrashing them around. The trees surrounding the once-a-house pile of debris swayed, and some of them fell down heavily. They could hear the SUV's alarm nearby; they could hear hundreds of car alarms wailing and screaming in the distance. And when they looked up they saw the worst of it.

"All the stars are falling down!" Gwen shouted. "Look! All the stars are falling down!"

* * *

**To be continued...

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**


	11. Somebody Has Died

* * *

**.11. Somebody Has Died**

* * *

The violence of first tremors threw Wilfred off the bed, and as he opened his eyes he saw huge windows first bulging inwards and then shattering, glass flying everywhere. He half crawled to the middle of the room, moaning in fear. He could see waves rising above the Cardiff Bay Barrage; the sea water of Bristol Channel, usually on a much lower level than the sweet water of the Bay, was now sloshing across the barrage, waves rising high as houses and speeding towards the Mermaid Quay. The August sky seemed slashed with bright streaks – stars were raining down on earth. Next second, all the lights went out.

Wilfred could hear people screaming in adjoining apartments. He got to his feet with effort, only to be pushed backwards by another wave of tremors. He landed on a sofa, just as the heavy ceiling lamp smashed in the spot he had been standing a moment ago.

He was looking through the non-existent window at the bleeding sky and at the waves biting the side of the building. His eyes were glossy with terror.

"Oh, my God!" he intoned. "Oh, my God! All the stars! All the people! Oh, all them poor souls!"

***

Harriet Jones was rushed from the third floor of 10 Downing Street, and into the cabinet room, surrounded by a circle of secretaries and bodyguards. They were still dressed in their official clothes; Harriet wore a skirt and a crumpled shirt, and had fluffy slippers on her feet. Lamps were swaying and the furniture was sliding back and forth across the tilting floor. The heavy door slammed behind them, cutting them off the rest of the world, locked in the impact chamber of the cabinet.

The situation was so familiar, Harriet almost laughed. Was there a Slitheen waiting for them outside.

"Hannibal," she whispered under her breath.

"Yes, Prime Minister?" her secretary shouted. Harriet looked at him, slightly confused.

"No, nothing, Phillip," she said. "It's just..."

The huge table broke in half and tilted sideways, hitting the floor with a thud.

"Phones are dead!" somebody yelled.

"Computers as well!" somebody else chipped in.

"We have no..."

Another thud.

"Is it an attack? Are we under attack?"

"It's the end! It's the end! It's the end!"

"Now, be quiet!" Harriet interrupted. "All of you! We know nothing! But we'll be all right! Just... don't lose your heads, will you?"

"Prime Minister, it'd be better if..."

The lights went out.

***

Rhys heard the Hub's door slamming loudly, just before the lights were replaced with emergency red glow. He got up shakily, holding on to the wall, one hand searching the pockets of his leather jacket, and then his denim trousers. He found the mobile and dialled Gwen's number.

He could hear everything around him breaking but he didn't give a damn. She was out somewhere, with the rest of them, they didn't even tell him where, and now the world was ending, and she was alone. Well, she wasn't, but she wasn't with him either.

There was nothing, his mobile was silent, and as he looked at the screen he saw that there was no reception. He swore and then he apologized to anyone who might be listening.

"Please," he whispered. "Let me find her. Let me get to her. Please, please, let me out!"

***

The TARDIS hit the front of the wave head on, and everything became a tumult of images. She was holding it, holding there, just holding on. There was no up and no down, no then and no now, now back and no forward. And there was no future. The TARDIS faced the wave, and was holding it back. But she couldn't hold all of it, and she couldn't hold it back for long.

The Doctor was clutching to the pillar, screaming. Locks in the floor opened and all the memorabilia, collected by centuries, were now flying around him, hitting him, shattering. There was fire. And ringing. A loud, deep toll of the Cloister Bell.

***

"It's an earthquake!" Martha shouted, crawling closer to Jack on all fours.

"It's more than that," he answered. He was looking up, at the sky. His face was as grey as dust.

Car alarms and fire alarms were wailing in the distance, and people were screaming in terror. There was a constant rumbling of convulsing ground.

"What do you think? Five points?" Ianto yelled.

"Not funny," said Gwen.

"It is a bit," Ianto shouted. "An earthquake in Cardiff. It _is_ funny."

"You're mad," Mickey moaned nearby.

"It's dark," Jack said.

"What?"

"That's the city, over there." He pointed at something underneath the broken sky. "And there's always a halo. It's all the lights in the centre. But it's gone. There's no light. No power."

"Brilliant," Gwen snorted. "Now what?"

"We need to get to the Hub."

"And how are you going to do that?" Ianto asked, sprawled flat on the ground.

Jack got to his knees.

"I'll drive."

"You're mad!" Mickey exclaimed.

***

Wilfred raised his hand and wiped tears rolling down his cheeks. Tremors subsided, but the waves were still sloshing about the Bay. And the stars were still falling.

"Oh, all them poor souls!" Wilfred whispered.

***

"It stopped," Phillip's voice announced. Harriet pushed away a snide remark, just waiting to slip out of her mouth. She felt her way to the nearest chair and slumped down, totally exhausted.

"Is everybody all right?" she asked and got a hum of "Yeses" in return. "Good. Now. Can we focus on establishing contact with the rest of the world? And does anybody have matches? A lighter? Two dry sticks?"

***

Sylvia Noble slowly made her way to the window and looked outside. The entire street was dark, except for a few cars flashing their hazard warning lights and wailing madly. There were people rushing out of their houses; it seemed that half Chiswick was out on the street, gawking at the sky.

Sylvia wrapped a shawl around her arms and stepped outside as well. Mr Singh, her neighbour, waved towards her with a flashlight. She screwed her eyes, her face pale and tired, Donna's shawl pressed to her mouth and nose.

"Have you seen that, Sylvia?" Mr Singh shouted. "Have you seen that sky?"

She only nodded. She looked up, at the sky full of glorious stellar fireworks.

"It's not even thirteenth," Mr Singh wondered. "It should be thirteenth of August for meteor showers. But it's twenty third, am I right?"

"Yeah," Sylvia agreed absent-mindedly.

"What does it mean, though?" another neighbour, Mrs Bowden, asked over the fence.

"Somebody has died," Sylvia whispered, her lips pale. "Somebody has died."

***

The TARDIS was drifting, dark and quiet.

* * *

**To be continued...

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**


	12. Back in a Rut

**

* * *

.12. Back in a Rut**

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"_From all around the world there are reports coming of damages caused by yesterday's blackout,_" said the broadcaster on the TV screen. "_In Great Britain itself, the city of Cardiff, the capitol of Wales, suffered serious damages to buildings and constructions in the Cardiff Bay area..._"

"Hello, Jack, is that you? Is this thing working? No, I can't _see_ him; if I could I wouldn't ask. Jack? Captain Jack Harkness, can you hear me?"

Jack rushed to the work station, pushing away black bags full of rubbish, blocking his way. He hit a few buttons on the keyboard.

"Prime Minister?"

"It's Harriet, Jack, and, are you all okay? I still can't see you... no, I _can't,_ Phillip, there's no image, just voice... Sorry. Problems with equipment... Is everybody all right? Is the Hub okay? I hear there was damage..."

"We're fine," Jack answered. He shrugged his shoulders. "Bit of a mess."

"Anybody injured?"

"No, we're _fine_, Harriet."

"Thanks God! I was sick worrying. All the computers are on a frizz here, and you can't even imagine the phones. A nightmare. Sorry, I don't have much time..."

"Ask away." Jack smiled.

"Pardon?"

"You wanted to ask if it was us," Jack said. "The blackout."

"Hmm, well, yes," she coughed uncomfortably. "Yes, if we have to be so blunt about it. Did _you_ do it?"

"No."

She sighed, obviously relieved. "Good. But what was it then? I have experts here going out of their wits trying to explain that phenomenon, but all they provided so far is just a – if you'll pardon my language – a heap of poo."

"We don't know much more than what is obvious, Harriet," Jack rubbed the dark stubble on his cheek. "But... It may have something to do with the Doctor."

"I _knew_ it!" There was a note of anger in Harriet's exclamation. "What was he thinking of? Can I talk to him, please?"

"He's not here."

"Oh... Well, then, I really have to go, Jack, but I will want to talk to him as soon as he comes back." She said it so matter-of-factly Jack couldn't suppress a grin. As if the Doctor were popping in for a visit every now and then, just like a next door neighbour. Jack remembered the time when he was looking for the Doctor for centuries. The Doctor wasn't easy to find when he didn't want to be found.

"Yes, Prime Minister," Harkness said, nonetheless.

"Bye, Jack. And, oh, I'm glad you're fine... No, Phillip, there was just static, can't you..."

The call was disconnected, and Jack straightened slowly, still with a smile on his lips. He looked around at his team, all of them ragged and tired, trying to bring the Hub to a habitable condition again. He looked at Wilfred Mott, shocked and pale, sitting on a dusty sofa with Martha, and listening to the news intently. Then he looked down, at the debris under his feet and sighed noticing a rare alien plant lying there, broken.

"Was it bad in London?" Mickey asked, wiping sweat off his forehead. He leaned on a broom.

Ianto, who was watching the news, as he carefully sorted soaked documents, provided the answer: "Not as bad as in Cardiff. Just some minor tremors; and the lights went out for about five minutes. Actually, the whole world felt it. The whole world went dark. Well in America and Australia it was just for a second, just a blip."

"Deaths?" Jack barked, his smile gone completely by now.

"No reports so far," Ianto wrinkled his forehead. "Lots of cuts and bruises, though. And the material damage is assessed at billions pounds already."

He turned up the volume on the TV. The broadcaster's voice was now coming off screen, as a montage of images appeared – destroyed houses, crowds on the streets, traffic jams, burning cars, people squatting at the airports, closed and demolished shops: "_A panic at Heathrow airport reached its peak as the British Airways plane flying from New Zealand attempted landing in complete darkness and without help of any of the usual navigation devices..._"

"We've been lucky this time," Martha said. "It could have been so much worse."

"_So we go out, me mates and I; and its not even Christmas, you know, not the usual..._"

"Ianto!"

"Yeah, sorry," Ianto switched the telly back to the news.

"_The global community looks up at the sky in awe,_" the familiar American broadcaster concluded, "_asking if we have seen the last of it_."

"Well, have we?" said Rhys.

Jack, Gwen, Martha, Mickey, and even Wilfred, looked at him with disbelief.

"Yeah," Mickey sighed. "As if..."

Jack shrugged. "All right, Wilfred, shall we go?"

"And where do you think you're going, Jack?" Gwen asked immediately, as the elderly man got up from the sofa, squeezing Martha's hand in a warm "thank you" gesture. Rhys nudged his wife with his elbow, but Gwen glared at Jack with her usual intensity.

"Wilfred is moving to a house on Windsor Esplanade," Jack said calmly. "His apartment is inhabitable at the moment."

"A nice, Victorian building," Martha said with a smile, "You should like it."

"I'll just say goodbye to Donna." Wilf smiled back, a sad, little smile without any real joy. "Are you sure you don't need me here? It is a bit 'all hands on board' in the Hub. I could help you tidying, you know, till you get back in a rut."

"Once you've settled, you're more than welcome," Jack answered.

"All hands on board," Ianto laughed. "I like it."

"And leave my office as it is," Jack said, in the door already. "I don't want you to misplace anything."

The Torchwood team sighed, rolling their eyes.

"Yes, Captain."

Ianto turned the volume up again: "_No, I'm telling you, you 'aven't 'ear the whole truth yet, Peggy Mitchell; it's not over, it's not at all..._"

* * *

**To be continued...**

**

* * *

**


	13. Debts of the Universe

_And here we are at last, honestly, I couldn't wait **any **longer!_

_**Disclaimer**: The only thing that belongs to me in that story is my heart (weeell, some ideas are mine as well, but the heart just sounds better =D)._

* * *

**.13. Debts of the Universe**

* * *

Martha leapt up from behind a computer's keyboard in the workstation area. That sound! The TARDIS was materializing inside the Hub, not so far from the Rift Manipulator hidden underneath its water sculpture. Without much thinking Martha pushed back from the desktop and dashed out to meet the blue police box, switching from nothingness to existence in a rather confined space, only slightly less cluttered than the rest of the dilapidated hall.

Familiar squeak of the door, and an equally familiar head appeared in the gap. The Doctor's face, illuminated by amber and green light spilling out from the TARDIS, seemed immaterial, translucent like a countenance of a ghost. His wide-opened eyes quickly scanned the Hub.

"Doctor?"

"No! _No – no – no – no – no – no – no_!"

He slammed the door shut. Martha halted, instantly full of premonitions. Traditionally, such behaviour boded no good.

"Doctor?!"

The TARDIS began to hum and flicker, gradually disappearing from the Hub's time and space.

"_Doctor_?!"

The box dissolved in the air. Martha stood still for a while, gasping quickly, expression of shock and worry on her face. For a brief moment she seemed to be on the verge of tears, but she only clenched her teeth and turned to Ianto. With the same alarmed expression, he was shifting his gaze from the space where the TARDIS had dematerialised a second ago, to the row of computer screens, and back again.

"O..._kay_..." Gwen said, leaning over the gallery railing on the upper floor. "That was a brief visit, wasn't it?"

"Record-breaking," Jack confirmed, stepping out of his office and halting next to her. He adjusted his braces and slid both hands into his pockets. "Twenty seconds, more or less?"

"He promised he'd _pop in_." Mickey Smith crouched over the debris of mugs lying about in puddles of tea and coffee. He had dropped the tray when the TARDIS had appeared in the Hub.

"It... was quite weird behaviour," Gwen noticed. "Right?"

"Record-breaking." Jack rocked on balls of his feet.

"Eerm... well, no, don't exaggerate," said Mickey, picking up hot tea-bags from the puddle and arranging them on the tray. "You should have seen him straight after the regeneration. Now that was _weird_."

Ianto twitched suddenly, understanding dawning in his eyes. Pointing towards one of the screens, he turned to Jack, and said quickly:

"The Freezer!"

"Donna!" Martha picked up, running already. "Jack! _It's Donna_!"

Behind her back she could hear Gwen's voice and a clatter of Harkness, Mickey and Ianto's shoes. She did not stop, though, until she saw the TARDIS, materialised at a thirty degree angle, several inches above the floor, partially inside the Freezer's wall.

"Oh, my _God_!"

The Doctor was just rushing out of the box. In his arms he was carrying a monstrous tangle of wires and small, flickering devices – organic-looking entrails of the TARDIS. He did not stop to say hello to Martha (just as he had not stopped to say _goodbye _earlier). It seemed that he did not even notice her. Something slid out of his arms as he ran, and went clattering across the stone floor. Martha pressed both hands to her lips, trying to suppress a scream. She knew that device. That horrible thing.

A Chameleon Arch. A metal circlet, able to transform the biological signature of a body. An ultimate camouflage device.

"Doctor!" Jack narrowly missed Martha in the doorway; he grabbed her by the shoulders and unceremoniously moved her aside. For a second there, Martha's feet lost contact with the floor. Ianto followed Jack closely, mixed emotions written clearly across his expressive face – in the Doctor's company there was always a shadow of anxiety, maybe even jealousy, present in his eyes. Mickey Smith wrapped his arm around Martha and helped her regain her footing.

"What's going on?" Gwen was the last one to barge into the room; dark hair flying, huge eyes even wider with curiosity. There was a little smile on her lips. For a brief moment Martha's thoughts drifted away from the Chameleon Arch and incomprehensible horror unfolding in front of her. "Rhys, even Jack, they have a rival."

"What is that?" Gwen asked.

"The Chameleon Arch," Martha whispered.

The Doctor shot her a glance form above the mess of tangled wires. His eyes were wide and absent, full of apprehension and of something that unnervingly suggested madness. Martha had seen similar looks in the past and feared them just like a little girl could fear the darkness sheltering the scariest monsters. On such occasions the Doctor would lose any resemblance to her dearest friend, becoming someone he actually was – a Time Lord, a being from an ancient, distant world; a being so absolutely alien and untamed, that it seemed to be bursting the prison of his apparently human body.

"Martha!" he yelled with morbid enthusiasm. "And Mickey Mickety Mick, my favourite protector of the Earth! Hello! How'r'you? Jack! Ianto! Oooh, hello, Gwen! Looking good, which month is it? If you don't mind me asking. And where's Rhys? You didn't fire him already, Jack, did you?!"

"Rhys went to..." Gwen started, but Jack would not let her finish.

"Can you explain _this_?" he asked, pointing at wires covering half the floor of the Freezer.

"Yes!" The Doctor switched on his sonic screwdriver and stuck it in the middle of the biggest knot of cables. "No! Not now!"

"This is the Chameleon Arch," Martha repeated with dread in her voice. "Doctor?"

"_Mhumpsfihht_," the Doctor announced through the sonic screwdriver he had put between his teeth to free his hands. He was fastening together two chaotic bundles of wire. "_Aaught_!"

"But it can only _mask_ biological traits!" Martha shouted, pushing away from Mickey. "How is this supposed to help Donna? I don't understand!"

She remembered perfectly well the excruciating pain the device had inflicted on the Time Lord. Even now she would wake up sometimes with his screams ringing in her ears. The Chameleon Arch appeared in her nightmares more often than a Hath drowning in the swamp, or the Toclofane's spheres, bristling with blades.

The Doctor pressed his sonic to the tangle of wires again. He was running towards Donna's sarcophagus now, the horrible circlet hanging from his forearm, cables slung over his shoulder.

"No-no-no-no-no!" he yelled at a full dash. "Cause, you see, I've redeveloped the Arch; it doesn't mask the biological structure anymore, it doesn't have to, why would it do that for? And it doesn't replace the original memories with a set of new ones. It is more sensitive, precise, selective – yes, I guess that's a good word – selective! It can _interpret_ memories; select memories; sift them and separate them from those she just shouldn't have, see?! The TARDIS has this slightly telepathic ability; she can get inside your head. She can extract anomalous set of memories; distinguish the gallifreyan signature from the terrestrial one, and divide them; separate those memories from everything that makes her Donna Noble!"

"But... You said it was impossible!"

"Impossible! Unheard of! Improbable! Except for the fact that I'm an improbability whiz!" The Doctor sent Martha a wide, completely insane smile. He was continuously on the move, his slim fingers constantly fiddling with the wires, weird devices and the circlet itself. "You can't remove those memories without damaging the basic personality matrix. No, you can't delete the memory of a first glance into an Untempered Schism; if it was possible, I'd do it myself; but if you look _inside_ the Vortex it stays with you forever, burnt, engraved in your brain, in your memory, in what describes you, in what defines your consciousness. But you can push it away, down into the subconscious mind, into regions usually unused, if you're not a Time Lord, that is; just..." He threw the screwdriver from one hand to the other. "...the subconscious mind has to be broadened. No, not even broadened. _Awakened_. Humans don't use much of their subconscious mind. It's simply _present_ in you – a blank page, a _tabula rasa, a terra incognita_, an empty memory disc. All you need is a wee bit of technology. A speck of genius – that's me by the way. A good deal of cheating. Erm, a bit more than a good deal... A _lot_..."

And suddenly he froze, the sonic screwdriver, still singing on the verge of audibility, in his raised hand. His hair was dishevelled even more than usually, his face covered in streaks of dirt and grease. Martha noticed that the whole of the Doctor's body was trembling – almost indiscernibly, but constantly – as if he was vibrating in between two realities.

"Eeerm... Did anybody else get _nowt_ of this?" Mickey asked uncertainly. "Or is it just me?"

The Doctor sent him a smile. Then he took a deep breath and pursed his lips in determination.

"Donna Noble saved the Universe," he said quietly and defiantly. "All the Universes. And all the Universes owe her something."

"What have you done, Doctor?" Jack asked, realisation dawning. "What have you done?"

That threw the Doctor out of his stillness.

"Aaaaah!" He reached the control panel of Donna's sarcophagus and began tapping icons on the touch screen. "I collected the debt."

A lid of the sarcophagus de-pressurized with a hiss of the air sucked inside.

"No!" Jack rushed towards the Doctor, determined to stop him. "I won't let you do anything that would put her in danger. You won't do anything, until you've explained..."

"A tad late for that." Disregard in the Doctor's voice was equally forced as his smile. "Believe me, Jack. I'm a 'too late', 'too early', 'untimely'_,_ 'on a wrong day' and 'in wrong order' expert. Time Lord, as you know perfectly well."

He lifted the lid of the sarcophagus.

"I've done it _already_!"

"Jack, stop him!" Martha yelled. "Mickey! Ianto!"

"But I've done it already, Martha!" The Doctor turned his radiant, mad face towards her. "Last of the Time Lords! If anybody can collect the debts of the Universe, it's me!"

He winked at her roguishly, tossed up the metal circlet of the Arch and caught it in the air – a spinning, silver circle of pain.

"But _what_?!" bellowed Jack. "What have you done?! Does it have anything to do with..."

"The Rift's activity? Probably. No, not probably. Undoubtedly. Without fail. Irrefutably. One hundred percent surely."

"Doctor," Martha gasped.

He just laughed, producing a large fob watch from within his pocket; ever so familiar device hidden under the lid engraved with mysterious gallifreyan symbols. His hands, holding the Chameleon Arch, disappeared inside the sarcophagus. Jack shouted indistinctly. Martha sprang up into run. Mickey, Gwen and Ianto stood motionlessly, as if fixed to the floor, not really understanding the show developing in front of their eyes.

The Doctor moved away a bit, half-turned from the sarcophagus, facing the Torchwood team in that irritating pose of his. He seemed to barely touch the floor with his feet, as if suspended in the air. He stretched his hand to the side with a flourish, pointed the screwdriver, and flipped the switch.

Martha, still running at full pelt, heard a quiet melody of the sonic, activating the Arch, triggering a screechy, broken resonance in the mess of wires, and a discord in the TARDIS's song. The entire Freezer shook up. A web of cracks and fissures appeared on the wall, in which the blue box was embedded. Martha could hear explosions in the main hall of the Hub, housing the Rift Manipulator. Lamps above her head brightened, as if receiving an electric current too high in voltage. One after another, the light bulbs started bursting up, spreading sparks and gradually drowning the Freezer in a semidarkness of emergency lights.

"_No_!" Jack yelled.

"_Yes_!" the Doctor yelled back. Before Jack could reach him, he switched off the screwdriver, tossed it up in the air and caught it, just as he had done with the Arch before – a smug (petrified) conjurer, presenting his best trick. Jack's fist connected with his cheekbone with a force that threw the Doctor against the sarcophagus. He bounced from its wall and pivoted, before slumping into the tangle of wires.

"Jack!" Gwen shouted. "No!"

"Doctor?" Martha wasn't sure if the Time Lord could actually survive such a blow. Jack pushed away Mickey, who was trying to stop him, grabbed the Doctor by coat's lapels and raised one hand for another blow.

"What... (a hit) ...did you... (a hit) ...have to... (another hit) ...sacrifice?!"

Mickey and Ianto stopped his fist before he managed to maul the Doctor completely.

"Yourself?!" Jack was shouting, twisting in their grip. "The Earth?! Us?! After what Rose's done?! After what she's done to _me_?!"

Mickey managed to pry his fingers from the Doctor's coat. The Doctor collapsed onto the floor, on his back, among the wires and leads, devices and subassemblies.

"Ow!" He touched his swelling cheek with one hand, and checked the state of his dentition with a tip of the tongue.

"What have you _done_?!" Jack hollered.

"Only what I had to," the Doctor answered, very quietly now, his voice breaking. "It was my decision, my choice. Don't you see it, Jack? It was my responsibility. Whose, if not mine?"

Jack's shoulders sagged.

"I hate you," he gasped. "I hate you right now. Even... even if it _is_ some sort of miracle... Even if you are conjuring... some miracle... again... I still hate you. _YOU'VE GOT A PHONE_!"

The Doctor's mouth, opened for an answer, closed suddenly. Apparently he was at the loss for words.

"_YOU'VE GOT A BLOODY PHONE! EVEN IF WE ARE OUT OF YOUR WAY! IF YOU ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF SAVING SIX BLOODY GALAXIES! YOU CAN ALWAYS CALL! AND ASK FOR ADVICE! TELL US ABOUT YOUR PLANS! SAY 'HELLO'! SAY 'HELLO, JACK, I AM PRESENTLY CAUSING A PARADOX, THAT WILL SURELY TEAR THIS WORLD APART, THOUGHT YOU MIGHT WANT TO KNOW'_!!!"

"I've missed you too," the Doctor answered from the floor. A drop of blood trickled from his cracked lip. "Would somebody, please, check on Donna?"

Jack, Mickey, Martha, Ianto and Gwen turned almost simultaneously.

Donna was sitting in the sarcophagus, both hands on its sides, wet, stripy pyjamas clinging to her skin, the Chameleon Arch askew on her damp hair. She looked at them with round, uncomprehending eyes.

"Blimey," she said uncertainly. "The dream I had..."

* * *

**To be continued...**

* * *


	14. Timelines

_It's a babblefest. But there's a method in this madness. I just don't know where =D._

* * *

**.14. Timelines**

* * *

"Do you have any plans?" Jack turned in his chair; golden lamplight drawing shadows on his face. "What are you going to do?"

"Wait for her," the Doctor said simply. He looked around the ruined office, not really seeing any of its features. His eyes were tired. "She needs some time with her family."

"You assume that she'd still go with you?" Jack sneered. "After all what happened?"

The Doctor sighed. "I don't think she has much choice in that matter. It's not safe for her to stay here, on Earth. It's not so safe for the Earth either."

"What do you mean?"

"The Rift playing up lately?"

Jack drew a long, whistling breath through his clenched teeth. He shoot an angry glance at the Doctor, taking in his wizened, battered face and his wide open, still slightly crazy eyes.

"Was it because of Donna?" he asked.

"I don't know." The Doctor shrugged his shoulders. "But I don't intend to stay and see for myself."

"What if she doesn't want to go with you?" There was an envious undertone in Jack's voice. His eyes sparkled.

"It's possible. She refused me once." The Doctor shot Jack a quick look. "You fancy her, don't you?"

"What?"

"You fancy Donna."

"I... I... No, I don't... Even if... None of your..."

"Of course. Sorry."

Jack shifted in his chair again. "I just think she's brilliant," he said harshly. "Don't you?"

"I've never doubted that." The Doctor smiled wistfully.

They looked at each other, straight into each other's eyes, and there was an instant understanding between them, an instant pace treaty. And then they looked away, sliding into their own worlds again. The Doctor was fiddling with the paperweight he'd picked up from Jack's desk, and Jack's eyes followed the beautiful item with a bit of cautious concern. The Doctor looked up, noticed Jack's expression, and replaced the paperweight on the desktop, in between a broken space resonator and a burnt-out gravity booster.

"You still owe me some explanation." Jack got up suddenly, hands clenched. "You owe me."

„Do I?" For a moment the Doctor glared at him with an expression of superiority on his face; a godlike creature scrutinising a lesser being. Then his face relaxed. "Maybe you're right."

"She's with her family now, laughing and prattling; no headache, no nosebleeds, no funny time disparity. A couple of days ago she was dying. She was in stasis, but she was slowly dying. I'd put her to the sarcophagus with an absolute certainty..." Jack swallowed suddenly, his blue eyes getting glossy. "Absolute certainty that she would never wake up again," he finished with effort.

"I know," the Doctor said quietly.

"But she's fine now. She's Donna. She remembers you and us, and she's Donna. How did you do that?"

"I cheated," the Doctor said. He made a move as if he wanted to get up from the chair as well, and leave the office before the next question could be asked. He didn't do it. He was just pushing around the objects on Jack's desktop, as if trying to find a perfect arrangement. Such behaviour was so unusual for the Doctor, it seemed unreal.

"I know you did," Jack growled. "But how?"

"I've altered the timeline," the Doctor said simply.

Jack was silent for a while.

"You're supposed to express your horror now," the Doctor murmured.

"I've been expecting something along those lines." Jack glared at him. "And I _have_ expressed my horror already. You still have nice panda eyes to prove it. Now, I want to know the details."

"You'll never know the details." The Doctor shook his head. "You wouldn't be able to grasp them all."

"Thank you for pointing out my mental inferiority. Again. Just tell me, how do you alter timelines?"

"I went to the past and I've changed something. Something very small. A minute manipulation, but one of powerful consequences," the Doctor said , his voice flat and even. "By changing the past I've changed the present. And the future. The thing I've changed forced me to go and change it."

Jack shrugged irritably. "Will you tell me what it was?"

"I'd rather not."

"Doctor..."

"There was no other way," the Doctor whispered. He rubbed his chin, and looked down, as if ashamed. "Well, there was, but obviously, I didn't take it. Anyway, it had already happened. It was already in motion. All the alternations, cracks, rifts, the sheer fact that Donna remembered... Don't you see? I went and I've changed the past already. It was a circle in need of closure. If I didn't, she'd never remembered, and I'd probably die, killed by Adam Mitchell. Or not. I don't know. I have no way of knowing for sure."

"So you've changed your _own_ timeline." Jack furrowed his brow. "But that's impossible."

"Oh, I don't think that _anything_ is impossible." The Doctor shrugged. "I don't believe in impossible. Very dangerous, fine. But undoable?"

Jack hesitated. "I've told you about Light. He... It predicted some catastrophic events, and then we had an earthquake, and a meteor shower, and a blackout. It was a close call, really. I'm not even gonna ask... You have one Harriet Jones to answer to, anyway. But... is it over now? Are we safe? Or is the world going to end?"

"Eventually." The Doctor looked at him, slightly surprised. "Why?"

"Oh, stop it! Stop fooling around! Is the world going to... I don't know... collapse... or implode... or fall to pieces, because of what you did?"

"No, I don't think so... _Weeell_, it might. I dunno."

"Doctor!"

The Doctor sighed. "Jack, time is quite flexible, so is the world. You can alter it and twist it, you can stab at it, but most wounds tend to heal. On other occasions the minutest events disrupt the continuity so completely, the whole universe ceases to exist. One life where there should be death... I know what I'm talking about, believe me. But... usually it heals. Just scabs over and heals. Otherwise no time travels would be possible, and you should know that, being a Time Agent and all."

"Yeah, an _ex_ Time Agent, and I almost destroyed the world once, thank you kindly." Jack grimaced.

"With all the interventions, meddling, time scoops, chaotic jumps, cheating and wild stabs at improvements my own people performed over centuries of so-called no-interfering, the universe should go to hell ages ago." The Doctor waved impatiently. "Time is flexible and time heals its wounds."

"But it is Donna we're talking about," Jack whispered.

"It's Donna," the Doctor repeated. "Exactly. 'cause, you see, there was always something drawing us together, some forces at work, I couldn't understand. All the coincidences, our meeting, our second meeting, premonitions, alternate worlds wrapped around her; it didn't stop. It's not over. I think those forces are still pulling at us. I don't know where they want us to go, but, frankly, I don't care that much."

"Doctor, what I mean is – it's Donna. It's not some minute event. She's not an ordinary human being. She is Donna Noble, the woman, whose brain you'd filled with the Time Lord's consciousness. She's a complete anomaly."

"She is, isn't she?" the Doctor grinned. "Just like you. She's a _fact_."

"Well, well, well, another _eyesore_," Jack muttered with angry humour. "Shall you skedaddle from her as well?"

"I don't intend to. I think I've got used to facts."

"Sweet."

"Yup."

"It doesn't change the fact the Rift has been acting up like mad. The world is not all right, Doctor. Your intervention..."

"Caused ripples?" the Doctor interrupted. "Is that what you mean?"

"I was aiming at tsunami."

"They're echoes," the Doctor said. "They're waves crisscrossing, seemingly chaotic, but drawing a very mathematical picture. They will come and they will fade."

"You've just destroyed half the world!"

"No I haven't. I actually saved the world from destruction. Weeell... ok, so I've started it all, unwillingly, but I've started it in the future, I mean, in the past, but it had ripples I saw in the now, so I wanted to undo it, by _not_ doing it, and I went to the future to see the outcomes, and they were bad, which made me realise, that I really had no choice. It's all very wibbly-wobbly... Ummm... You know what I mean?"

"No."

"Me neither. But what you've called a blackout; it wasn't the worst thing that could have happened. It was just an echo of that worst thing. Just a wave."

"So when Donna had been talking as if she were ahead in time before..."

"Waves. Echoes. Precognition is often an effect of something being changed in the past."

"Is it so simple, then?" Jack sneered.

The Doctor sighed again. "Not really. No, it's not simple at all. You want me to be honest with you? Oww, that was a daft question, wasn't it? I don't suppose you would want me to lie to you, would you?"

"_Doctor_!"

"Fine. Right. Honestly, I don't think we are still in the same timeline we were several months ago."

"What do you mean?"

"I believe that a new timeline branched off from the old one to accommodate the Donna-fact. I cheated and as a result the parallel timeline had been created, to allow for the change." The Doctor put his hands together and then moved them apart to illustrate his words. "There may be another universe, a parallel universe, in which Donna never remembers, and she lives happily with her family, oblivious of our meeting, missing all the important events and horrible catastrophes. And I continue to travel alone. Or maybe I meet a new companion. No way of knowing for sure, the walls of the worlds being impenetrable again and all. And we never meet again, just as I planned when I was erasing her memory. A sad, sad, parallel universe." There was a pale smile on the Doctor's wizened face.

"Are you saying that we are not in a _real_ universe anymore?" Jack asked angrily.

"Who's to decide which one is real? Or _real-er_ than the other? They are parallel, you see. They're equally important. Besides, you _are_ in the other universe as well. I mean, the other Jack is. The Jack-with-slightly-less-problems-to-worry-about."

Jack rolled his eyes. "Okay, so basically you are implying that in this other world you had never gone to the past to change this minute thingy, and as a result Donna never started to remember, therefore her life was never in danger. Therefore you are solely responsible for all the misery she's gone through."

"I should've remembered I was talking to the Time Agent," the Doctor sighed. "Should've been more careful."

"I'd like to punch you in the face right now," Jack said. "So, are you responsible for all that madness, or not?"

"I'm not sure." The Doctor shook his head. "Maybe. But these forces, these drawing-us-together forces... I don't think they're my doing. I don't think I've seen the end of it all. I do not think that the parallel-world-Donna is completely safe. I don't know how the parallel-world-Doctor will deal with it. But I am _here_, and I don't think I could do anything else, anything different. I don't think I had any choice in that matter. I just... don't think it's over."

Jack sat down heavily in his chair and folded his hands on the desktop.

"You know what?" he said quietly. "I've just realised you're trouble. You're one big fucking trouble and you're drawing us all in your messed up world of continuous troubles. I'm going to talk to Donna and I'm going to insist on her staying here. I don't like the talk about unrecognizable forces and not seeing the end of it all. I don't like branching timelines, and ripples, and precognitions. I don't like the idea of you taking care of her."

"I need _her_ to take care of _me_," the Doctor said after a long while. He smiled briefly; a small, sad smile of somebody very tired and not quite sane. "Apparently, I'm rubbish on my own."

* * *

**To be continued...**


	15. Allonsy!

_And so it ends..._

* * *

**.15. Allons-y!**

* * *

"No, Gramps, but, don't you see?" Donna gestured empathically, green eyes vivid and full of sparkling energy. "He needs me. He's complete rubbish on his own!"

"Donna. Child." Wilf opened his arms as if inviting her to a hug. Oh, he wanted to hug her. Again. And again. And a million times more. If it was up to him, he'd never let her out of his arms.

_He's __a man who had brought you back home asleep and pale, and burnt-out, and half-dead. He's a man who erased your memories – twice! He's a man who had walked away into the rain, and for whom I had felt so sorry; but only until your nightmares begun. He's the man who didn't come for you when you were bleeding and dying. He's a man who abandoned you!_

"I don't think it's such a good idea." He couldn't say everything he wanted to say, so he just shook his head. "You should stay with us for a while."

"Gramps..." She was surprised now. She shot him an uncertain look. "I _want_ to go."

"But... your mother..." Oh, that was weak. How would he ever stop Donna by mentioning Sylvia? "_I_ want you to stay," he finished.

"I thought you wanted me to be happy," Donna said quietly.

_I want you to be alive. Not carried away by a tall man in a soldier's coat, and transported to another town, to an underground base, to be observed a__nd tested, and finally lulled to sleep by cold liquid pumping into your veins. I want my bright, funny, lovely Donna; my far-from-skinny Donna; my cheeky, loudmouth, silly Donna; and not this slender, pale, smart and decisive girl who's talking to me now. I want my Donna back!_

"I _want_ you to be happy," Wilf said. "But I also want you to be safe."

"But I am safe. Don't you see? I'm quite capable of keeping myself safe."

_Not a single day with him __are you safe. Each new morning brings new mortal danger. Oh, the tears you've cried. The pain you've gone through. The fear you've chased away by a shrug and a joke. The stories you've told me, when you still could remember enough to tell stories. You are a soldier with him, Donna. You fight and you run, but I know for a fact, that the bravest of soldiers do die on a frontline. They fight and they die._

"At least stay until you feel well."

"I am well. Never better. Oh, Gramps, he promised me a beach. And this time I'm gonna hold him to his word. He said a beach and the beach it will be!"

"Donna..."

"Well, all right." She sighed, rolling her eyes. "I'll stay for the weekend. Is that all right? Can he come?"

_No!_

"Yes. Of course. Can't you stay longer?"

Donna reached out and touched Wilf's hand; gently, with much love.

"If you ask me again to stay, I'll stay, Gramps," she said seriously. "You know that. But I need to go. It is all somewhere there, all the worlds, all the wonders. You used to understand. You still do. The stars... Gramps, I can touch them. I want to touch them again. I can't remember what he remembers anymore, but I have this feeling... The stars – they are in my blood now, just as they are in yours. You've heard them singing all your life. When I was deaf, you've heard them. Now I can hear them as well. I just can't turn away from them. I can't."

_I'm losing you. God, I'm l__osing my dearest granddaughter. _

"I understand, Donna."

"Thank you! Thank you, Gramps!" She leant suddenly and kissed him on the cheek. "Love you!"

And off she was – slim and girlish in her pale blue jeans and a printed top she got from Gwen Cooper, red hair flying wild, eyes flaming with happiness. Wilfred Mott sighed and then slowly raised his hand to the cheek. Donna's kiss burned. Wilf tried not to cry.

"Just a weekend!" He heard Donna's voice from the corridor. "It's not _domestic_; it's just a couple of days! And then – the beach! Well, stop pulling faces, Martian; I think I really deserve it this time. After all, I saved the universe. All of them. I think I deserve something in return!"

_Yes, and it certainly isn't an ice coffin in a__ bleak, underground crypt of Torchwood's Hub. If only universes were known for paying their debts. If only the world was fair. Oh, Donna, please, be careful!_

The Doctor was grumbling quietly.

"Now, come on, Doctor," Donna insisted. "I feel like I've slept for ages! Well, I've slept for ages, haven't I? Can we fly to Chiswick? Can we? Cause Gramps would like to fly. I know he would."

Wilfred smiled. Oh, he wanted it, all right. All the anger, all the fear, all the premonitions in the world wouldn't stop him from jumping on board this wonderful blue box of the Doctor's. Even if it was just for a flight home. He'd stand there, in the open door, and wave at the Earth, just as Donna had done, so long ago.

"Ooooh... all right then," the Doctor's voice murmured. "Just this once."

"Brilliant!" Donna exclaimed. "Let's go, then! _Allons, magne-toi_!"*

The Doctor gasped. "What did you just say?"

"Isn't it what you're always saying?" Donna asked, surprised. "_Allo-allo_? Or something?"

* * *

* _Allons, magne-toi – (French slang) Now, then, look sharp, get a move on!_

* * *

**THE END OF EPISODE THREE**

_THE VIRTUAL SEASON FIVE CONTINUES IN EPISODE FOUR_

**ON A PALE HORSE**

* * *

"Green grass, blue sky, a singular yellow sun, this is nettle, and over there, in the orchard, those are apple trees, without apples, unfortunately. And it's going to rain." Donna did not intend to deny herself a tiny portion of spite. "Judging by gathered evidence it is quite safe to say that this is..."

"The Earth," the Doctor finished , resignation in his voice.

***

They went through the high gate and found themselves on an incredibly crowded street. After a few steps, Donna stopped giggling. She sniffed and quickly covered her nose with a hand.

"Urghh!" She pulled a face. "It _stinks_!"

***

"It'll be hell," the Doctor whispered. "This town. The whole England. The entire Europe. We should get out of here as soon as possible."

"O...kay, I've got it. Hell. Run. You don't have to say anything else."

***

"Donna, you know you can fly the TARDIS."

"What? No! No, I can't, damn it, have you forgotten that I've lost all of your _timelordly _knowledge?" Donna yelled. „And what is it supposed to mean anyway?! _You can fly the TARDIS_! What does it _mean_?!"

***

Donna's eyes widened in fear.

"We're in Pompeii," she whispered. "And it's Volcano Day."

"It's Volcano Day," the Doctor confirmed, dread in his voice.

* * *


End file.
